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CHRIST IN THE LIFE 



SERMONS. 



WITH A SELECTION OF POEMS. 



y 

EDMUND H. SEARS, 

AUTHOR OF "THE HEART OF CHRIST," "REGENERATION, 







BOSTON: 
LOCKWOOD, BROOKS, AND COMPANY. 

1877. 

9h 



TBI UBRAftTj 

•» CONGRESS I 

[WASHINGTON 



3X<n ?^3 



Copyright, 1876, 
By LOCKWOOD, BROOKS, & CO. 



Franklin Press : Rand, Avery, & Co., Boston, 



PREFACE. 



MR. SEARS wrote for a previous publication, 
entitled "Sermons and Songs of the Christian 
Life" a preface, much of which would apply equally 
well to the contents of this present volume. In 
regard to his sermons, he stated that he assumed the 
fundamental facts of the gospel history as premises 
acknowledged by the congregation ; and that he did 
not regard it as the province of a sermon to try to 
prove these facts, that task belonging to works of 
another kind. The sermons were written, not for 
the press, but for the pulpit ; and he did not attempt 
to revise them to the»standard of classical taste, be- 
lieving that they might by such revision lose in point 
and directness. This volume has had none of the 
care which Mr. Sears bestowed on his published 
writings, every thing being printed just as left by 
him. 

He believed that every Christian should have 
church relations, and be faithful to them ; and he 
always studied to render faithful service to the 
denomination where Providence had placed him, not 



PRE FA CE. 



by trying to conform to the average opinions of the 
denomination, but by trying to grasp and bring 
forth anew the vital truths essential alike to individ- 
ual progress and denominational life. In the fulfil- 
ment of this high purpose, he often found himself 
standing almost alone ; and this isolation was deeply 
painful to him. Not that his courage ever faltered. 
His life was marked by many an act of independence, 
as fearless and resolute as his declaration from the pul- 
pit that he would not obey the fugitive slave lav/ ; and 
he was ever active in the discharge of all the duties 
of citizenship, and many times threw his whole influ- 
ence in opposition to his warmest friends. But few 
knew how much his independence cost him. He 
was acutely sensitive, shrinking from an unkind criti- 
cism, dreading publicity, self-depreciating, retiring, 
though not reserved, in disposition. In his latest 
years, when he most longed for sympathy and fellow- 
ship, the deep convictions to which long years of 
patient study had brought him, and his position as 
one of the editors of the " Monthly Religious Maga- 
zine" made him a leader in the contest between the 
extremes of the denomination with which he acted. 
His disposition was unswervingly just; and he always 
took the greatest pains not to misrepresent the views, 
nor impugn the motives, of any person ; but he had a 
keen eye for the weak points of an argument, and 
ready powers of debate and satire. How unreservedly 



PRE FA CE. 



he threw himself into the conflict, the pages of the 
"Magazine" bear record. He did not escape the 
.harsh criticism and the misrepresentation that he 
expected ; but these roused no bitterness in his spirit, 
and he never, for merely personal reasons, replied to 
any attack. If at times his words seemed sharp and 
emphatic, they were the expression of earnest feeling 
and strong conviction, never of intolerance nor un- 
kindness. 

Mr. Sears was best known as a preacher and a 
writer on religious themes ; but the wide variety of 
his studies occasionally tempted him into other fields 
of literature, where he always met with some degree 
of success. But working always with a definite plan 
and purpose, he would spare but little time for any 
thing not included in his plan of study. His his- 
torical lecture, " The Saxon and the Norman" was 
many times delivered, and was well received ; and it 
is here printed in the hope that it may add to the 
attractiveness of the volume. 

Mr. Sears was exceedingly fond of poetry ; and his 
powers of memory, naturally strong, had from his 
earliest years, been trained to an unusual degree of 
perfection ; so that his mind was richly stored with 
the best poetry of more than one language. In times 
when he was compelled to rest from his severer labors, 
his own thought frequently found expression in verse. 
A large, perhaps the larger portion of his poems has 



VI PRE FA CE. 



never been printed; as his judgment of his work, 
as well as of himself, was always severe, and his 
verse was often the revelation of his innermost expe- 
rience. Several poems already printed, but not con- 
tained in any previous volume, have been collected 
in the following pages ; and a few are here for the 
first time given to the public. 

In the original plan of this volume, it was proposed 
to include a short memoir of Mr. Sears, giving a 
sketch of his early life, of which he himself once 
wrote a fragmentary but graphic account. But no 
man ever more carefully avoided bringing into promi- 
nence his own personality; and he needs neither 
eulogy nor vindication. All that he was, he made 
himself by systematic and untiring industry, and by 
concentration of all his powers in lofty aims. If his 
life has any lessons for others, those lessons are con- 
tained in his own words, into which he put his very 
life. It was a simple life of duty, of unceasing toil 
and activity, — a life kept unspotted from the world, 
and consecrated without reserve to high and unselfish 
ends. During his last long and painful illness, he 
said that he had finished nearly all the work he had 
ever planned, If his life were spared, he saw plenty 
of work that he might do, but he did not wish to stay 
here, and live an idle life, nor to be a care to others. 
In the year 1862 he was very sick, and doubtful of 
recovery. His calm resignation at that time, is 



PREFACE. vil 



shown by his verses written then, " Away from 
Church!' But he had plans for work which would, 
as he thought, require from ten to fifteen years of 
active life ; and he would be glad to stay, and complete 
it. His prayer had been answered, and he would 
not again ask for longer life. So his work was 
finished ; and very weak, and suffering much in 
body, but with intellectual powers undimmed, and 
with trustful spirit, he lay waiting for the summons 
to a higher life. A few hours before his death, when 
his physical agony was sore, and his faculties of 
speech and hearing were failing, he was asked by 
one of those around him, if he wanted any thing. 
With great effort, he spoke one word, " Rest." Soon 
he passed from that chamber of awful suffering, to 
find the rest which even they who most loved him 
here were powerless to give. On the stone above 
the spot where his worn-out mortal body lies sleep- 
ing, are graven the words of the Master to whose 
cause he gave loving service, — " He that overcometh, 
the same shall be clothed in white raiment ; and I 
will confess his name before my Father, and before 
his angels." 



CONTENTS. 



SERMONS. 



Elijah 

David .... 

TlBNI AND OMRI . 

Pilate .... 

The Gourd 

Spiritual Resurrection 

Conversion 

Self-Consecration . 

Conditions of Spiritual Progress 

Success 

The Three Advents .♦ 

Progress 

The Thrones in Heaven 

Peace by Power 

The Atonement . 

The Trinity . 

The Divine Friendships 

Encouragements 



23 
33 
43 
54 
65 
75 
86 

97 
112 
127 
140 

I 5<> 

161 
171 
185 

*95 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN 



205 



CONTENTS. 



POETRY. 



Emancipation . . . - . 

"Old John Brown" .... 

Song of the Stars and Stripes . 

Song for July 4, 1861 ...'.• 

The Home Guard .... 

How Gold may be kept Bright 
Golden Mean ..... 

Serenity ...... 

Old England and New 

Ode for the Union College Celebration . 

Ordination Hymn .... 

Hymn for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the w<: 

ment at Weston of Rev. Joseph Field, D.D 
Golden- Wedding Hymn ..... 

A Greeting from the Sunday School 

Calm at Sea . 

Dirge ...... 

Guardian Angels ..... 

In Sickness ..... 

Away from Church ..... 

"Show us the Father" 

Two Spirit Worlds ..... 

My Psalm ...... 



241 


. 242 


244 


. 246 


247 


. 248 


249 


• 250 


252 


• 254 


256 


Settle- 


. 258 


259 


. 261 


263 


. 266 


267 


. 268 


270 


• 273 


• • 275 


■ 277 



SERMONS 



ELIJAH. 



2 Kings II : u : "Behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of 
fire, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven." 

Matthew XVII: 3: "Behold, there appeared unto them Moses and 
Elijah talking with him." 

MOSES and Elijah talking with Jesus! The 
names which represent three dispensations, 
appearing in close relationship at the consummation 
of them all, — the dispensation of law, of prophecy, 
and of the gospel which was the fulfilment of the 
other two. The passages are wonderfully suggestive 
to us of the connection of events, and the relations 
which the most distant periods of time hold to each 
other, if only we could see things from the other 
side, where in the angelic vision they blend together 
in harmony. 

The history of Elijah the Tishbite is one of the 
most remarkable portions of the Old Testament nar- 
ratives. It has furnished the grandest material, not 
only for the song and the sermon, but for the painter 
and the dramatist ; and the character depicted has 
been held up as a model to the reformers of all ages. 



ELIJAH. 



I propose this morning to unfold some of the lessons 
which come from this history, — lessons historical, 
moral, and spiritual. 

i. The first pertains to the authority of the record, 
and the place which the Bible holds amid the changes 
of human creeds and opinions. Fifty years ago it 
was taken as the most literal history, even to the 
going up of Elijah in bodily form, chariot and all, to 
a local heaven in the sky. This and all the miracles 
of the Old Testament narratives were taken in the 
baldest literal sense, from the manufacture of Adam 
out of clay, down to the preservation of the three men 
in the furnace of fire. The Old Testament embodied 
the science, the history, the chronology, the ethics of 
the times, such as our grandfathers held them, and 
such as no discoveries, they thought, were ever to 
change or modify. Then followed an era of research, 
of criticism, of scientific analysis, and science ap- 
pears, with a good deal of conceit, penetrates the 
heavens where Elijah went up, and finds no place for 
him or his chariot ; pushes back the history of man 
away beyond Adam and Eve ; experiments largely on 
caloric, and finds that the human form cannot exist 
in a furnace made seven times hotter than red-hot 
iron. Hence came the disparagement and the neg- 
lect of the Old Testament ; its history "being treated 
as myth and fable, and its ' miracles at one with the 
old mythologies of India or Greece. Such are two 



ELIJAH. 



periods in the history of opinion and criticism, — one 
the period of blind faith, the other of blind scepti- 
cism. A third period has already dawned. Science 
— the most advanced science, science that penetrates 
not only downward into the earth, but upward also 
into mind and spirit — has found that the sceptics 
knew less about miracles than they supposed ; yea, 
that when you get through the crust of matter, all is 
miracle ; and that when the laws of mind as well as 
of matter begin to be understood, and all their inter- 
blendings and inter-actings, and the laws of the spirit- 
world within the natural, science has only begun to 
give us the stammerings of knowledge, stumbling on 
facts all the while which open the old Bible anew, and 
give even to its miracles a sacredness and a signifi- 
cance they never had before. One of the most scien- 
tific men of the age — a man whose science goes not 
only downward into matter, but upward into mind and 
spirit, says, " Nothing is more evident to-day, than 
that the men of facts are afraid of a large number of 
important facts. All the spiritual facts, of which 
there are plenty in every age, are denounced as super- 
stition : large-wigged science takes off its hat to a 
new beetle or a fresh vegetable alkali, and behaves 
worse to our ancestors than to our vermin. Evidence 
on spiritual subjects is regarded as an impertinence, 
so timorous are they, and so morbidly fearful of 
ghosts. They are attentive enough to a class of 



ELIJAH. 



facts that nobody values, — to beetles, spiders, and 
fossils ; but as to those dear facts that common men 
and women in all time and place have found full of 
wonder and interest and importance, they show them 
a deaf ear and a callous heart." 

It is the science that only looks earthward, and 
sees only one class of facts, that derides the miracles 
of revelation, and thinks the Bible obsolete. By the 
science that looks both upward and downward, some 
of the miracles of the Old Testament are not only 
restored to their place in a system of Divine Revela- 
tions, but are looked upon as avouching realities 
whose sweep and grandeur our fathers in their nar- 
row literalism could hardly have discerned. 

2. For the interior and more close relationship 
between the Old Testament and the New is more 
apparent. It is Moses and Elijah talking with Christ. 
It is the three dispensations which they represent, 
seen as one continuous system of Providence, like the 
stalk, the branches, and the flowers of the plant, all of 
them alike essential in producing the golden fruit of 
the tree of life. The Old Testament miracles and the 
New often tend to mutual explanation, and flash light 
one upon the other; showing the former as only 
gleams through partial openings, which in the new 
dispensation are more broadly effulgent. You will 
not fail to trace the analogy between the miracles of 
Elijah and those of Christ ; between the ascent of 



ELIJAH. 5 



Elijah from Mount Carmel and that of Jesus from 
Mount Olivet ; between the imagery of the prophetic 
narrative, — the chariots of fire and the horses of fire, 
— and the imagery of Saint John in the Revelation, 
who describes in vision the agencies of the Divine 
Providence, — the God in history moving behind the 
veil of sense and matter. So striking is the analogy, 
that Strauss has tried to show that the New Testa- 
ment writers constructed their narrative with the 
story, of Elijah for their model, — that Mount Sinai 
has its parallel in the Mount of Transfiguration, and 
that Carmel has its parallel in Olivet. 

3. But the character of Elijah as the reformer of 
his times, standing forth in such bold relief amid the 
corruptions of his age, furnishes the third important 
lesson that comes from the narrative. That he is a 
real character, and no myth or invention, is plain ; for 
no romancer of that age could have invented all the 
granite that was in him. To understand him well, we 
must have a picture of the times he lived in. We 
must know who was Jezebel, and who were the false 
prophets whom she brought into Judaea to supplant 
the Hebrew religion and abolish the worship of one 
God for the worship of Baal. She was a woman from 
Sidon, where Baal was worshipped, — a woman beau- 
tiful and accomplished ; but it was the beauty of the 
tigress, which concealed all subtlety and cruelty. 
Baal was the sun ; and his rites of worship involved 



ELIJAH. 



the worst abominations. The blood of human victims 
smoked upon his altars. Astarte, or the moon, was 
also worshipped. Her altars were in the groves ; and 
in them the rites of lust were sheltered and made 
sacred. This was the Sidonian worship, now becom- 
ing the established religion of the kingdom of Israel ; 
and four hundred of its blood-stained prophets were fed 
at Jezebel's table. The prophets of the Lord had been 
slain, or had compromised, or had escaped for their 
lives. One prophet stands out as the last embodiment 
of the Hebrew religion, — one man standing for the 
truth, against the government and all its retainers who 
had given in to the gory rites of human sacrifice. The 
worship of one God, to all human appearance, is about 
to be extinguished in the blood of his own prophets. 
To understand the miracles which Elijah now wrought, 
we must remember what he represents. The agen- 
cies of the Divine Providence centre in him, and circle 
about him. He stands at the point where the influx 
of heaven itself meets the efflux of hell. The long 
line of future events, in which are the Christ and his 
gospel and a world's redemption, hangs now upon his 
person. It is just that crisis where the invisible 
armies, which are generally veiled, come partially into 
view, — where the veil of sense becomes semi-trans- 
parent, and gives gleams of the God and his angels, 
who are always nigh. Numbers become of no account. 
One man is as good as a million where he stands for 



ELIJAH. 7 

a great truth, and is clothed in its authority and 
majesty ; and a whole myriad who represent some 
falsity of to-day shrink into their contemptible indi- 
vidualism, and the stream of Providence washes them 
away like sand. This is what makes Elijah stand 
forth in such bold relief, and all the miracles at his 
hand take on a divine significance. Even where we 
cannot verify the literal fact, the miracle loses none of 
its meaning. That the fire came down from heaven 
upon his altar ; that within the wind, the earthquake, 
and the fire, he heard the still small voice of the Lord, 
which spake to the inward ear ; that years of famine 
and years of plenty, and showers from the sea, fore- 
shadowed themselves upon his spirit whose ear caught 
the whispers of the Lord which foretoken what is to 
be, — all this becomes credible when we reproduce 
to ourselves the times, and the man who stood as the 
last embodiment of the Divine Providence. And with 
what power and grandeur does it clothe him, with 
what a moral heroism, when he represents not him- 
self, but a great truth in its majesty ! Ahab and all 
the military force of his kingdom are arrayed on one 
side; the prophet clothed in skins, with a leathern 
girdle, is on the other. And yet royalty in its fine 
robes cowers before him ; and you feel, on reading the 
story, that the prophet is king, and the monarch is his 
vassal. Such is the supremacy of ideas over brute 
force; and such the royalty of truth, which no mean- 



8 ELIJAH. 

ness of outward attire can ever conceal, but which 
rather in such disguise shines more in unborrowed 
splendor. 

4. But we come to another and most important 
lesson which this whole history brings home to us. 
It is the invisible Divine Protection which is thrown 
around every one who has a mission in the world, 
who has a Divine Idea, and tries to live it and put it 
into action. We talk very crudely, I think, about the 
dispensations of Providence. The invisible guards, 
the horses of fire, are about the men who look for 
the leadings of Providence, and try to follow them # 
There is no one who has not some mission in this 
world, some duty to his times, and some Christian 
work in it ; and the doctrine which the text enforces 
is, that he who works with Providence, works with an 
invisible army that engirds him, and moves with him. 
He never works alone. He may seem to come into 
danger and to death ; but the danger and the death are 
apparent, and not real. The engirding and guiding 
Providence is with him ; while with others it is only 
the Providence that permits, and finally brushes them 
out of its way. And yet how often in our noise and 
bustle and conceit do we ignore these invisible 
agencies, and claim their victory as ours ! We do not 
see the Lord in the conflict because of the dust we 
raise about us 



ELIJAH. 9 

How silent move thy chariot-wheels 

Along our camping-ground, 
Whose thickly-folding smoke conceals 

Thy camp of fire around ! 

We tremble in the battle's roar, 

Are brave amid its calm ; 
And, when the fearful fight is o'er, 

We snatch thy victor-palm. 

There is no loneliness, no desertion, no solitude, to 
the man who has not only faith in Providence, but 
who is doing Providential work at the same time. A 
great company is with him, — with him for the best 
and highest purposes, as much as if he saw them. 
Yea, sometimes at difficult turns he will have a vivid 
consciousness of the fact ; and it is this consciousness 
which gives to moral courage all the real lustre which 
it has. If you would have this perception of the 
invisible presences, and this sense of eternal security, 
I pray you do not rest merely with a faith in Provi- 
dence. Everybody has that, and has talked it till it 
is stale. Do something! Do something that will 
bring you within the living stream of Providence, so 
that it will bear you up on its currents, and, the 
navies of heaven riding with you, bear you along upon 
its waves. 

5. One more lesson. The light which our subject 
sheds around the dread fact which we call death is 
of exceeding interest. That the ascent of the 



io ELIJAH. 



prophet into heaven was like the ascension of Christ, 
is very true ; and the sceptical critics are so far right. 
Yea, further, it is like the transition of every good 
man to immortality. It is plain, if you read the nar- 
rative carefully, that the prophet died as other men 
die : only in his case we have a gleam from the other 
side through the opening, and see what is beyond. 
" I pray thee," said Elisha, "that, when thou art taken 
from me, a double portion of thy spirit may be with 
me." — "If thou see me when I am taken up," said 
Elijah, "it shall be so : if not, it shall not be so." In 
other words, " If, when my spirit leaves its clay, you 
can see me and follow me, that will show you that 
you are indeed a prophet like me, and that a prophet's 
vision has been given you of the things beyond the 
veil of time and mortality." And so it was. The 
invisible agencies that had been around him in his 
fight with wrong and had given him the victory, gave 
him the victory over death ; the horses of fire and the 
chariots of fire symbolizing the triumph which greets 
the true servant of God on the other side of the 
grave. What a rebuke to our timid and halting faith, 
which peoples the other side with spectres, and this 
side only with realities ! Happy will it be, if, when 
our work is done, death as well as life shall be within 
the protecting and guiding Providence which shall 
make our place of transition like the heights of 
Carmel. 



ELIJAH. 



Let us remember that God has no favored ones ; 
that the laws of his providence are universal and all- 
pervading, just as active around the humblest individ- 
ual to-day as around the Elijahs and the Christ long 
ago ; that the Carmels and the Olivets of history only 
reveal to us the realities that always are, and the 
helpers that are always nigh. Do something. Do 
something that brings thee within the loving folds of 
that Providence. Do not stand indolent outside, to be 
swept out of its way into the darkness and the cold. 



D A V I D. 



Heb. XL 32 : " The time would fail me to tell of David/' 

HE seems to have been made up of two men. 
He was a man after God's own heart. His 
kingdom prefigured that of the Messiah, so that 
Christ is called the Son of David. He was the most 
inspired genius of the old dispensation ; and his 
psalms are pitched to a strain so lofty and sweet, that 
they enter largely into the Christian ritual, as if they 
furnished to all after-ages the richest language for a 
fervent devotion. But turn back this old history, 
and who is this man after God's own heart ? Time 
certainly would fail to tell of his crimes, — his treach- 
eries, his murders, his adulteries, his grovellings in 
the very sty of sensuality. Murder is too mild a 
word. His butcheries of the Canaanites were so 
manifold, that when he had killed them off, — men 
and women, and little children, — his hands were too 
red to build the temple, and the work was deferred 
till Solomon's reign. And this is the man who wrote 
the Twenty-third Psalm : " The Lord is my Shepherd ; 
I shall not want." 



DAVID. 13 



" Green pastures and still waters " reached through 
crime and slaughter, — that has been the mystery 
ever since, and has prompted the question, how the 
moralities of the old Bible are to be reconciled with 
the pure morality of the new, or, indeed, with the 
demands of the pure, absolute religion of humanity. 
Time certainly would fail to tell of David. 

At the same time, his history, dark and bright, is 
bound up together in this old Bible ; and it brings to 
view a feature of revelation which we are very apt 
to undervalue, and which sceptics, I think, entirely 
misapprehend. "Why," said an objector, "there are 
passages in the Bible which would not bear to be 
read aloud in any decent society." I certainly should 
hope they never would be. But it does not occur to 
these objectors, that the Bible is not only a revelation 
of God, but a revelation of man, — a disclosure, on 
the one hand, of human nature, opening up its lowest 
deeps into the light of day ; and a disclosure, on the 
other, of the Divine character and attributes shining 
down into those deeps, to show their quality, and 
search out the lowest depravities of man. So there 
is just this parallelism running through the Bible, 
and especially the old Bible, from beginning to end. 
It is a book of human nature, that opens up from the 
lowest abyss ; and a book of prophecies, that pours 
down into that abyss the splendors of the Divine face, 
and the denunciations of the Divine Word. What a 



14 DAVID. 



Bible human wit would have contrived for us ! Like 
one of the rose-colored novels, all of which could be 
read aloud, and admired for once, and then laid on 
the shelf forever. 

Time would fail to tell of David ; but he is a largely 
representative man, — one of the most religious men 
that ever lived, and, withal, the most sensual ; the 
most tender-hearted, and, at the same time, the most 
cruel ; and, as such, he is a lesson to all times and 
ages. We will open this book of human nature, 
and draw out some of its lessons, and apply them, 
and show how the Bible should be used as a help in 
the religious life. 

i. The first lesson is that of devotion divorced 
from morality, — worship so absorbed in the praise of 
God as to be oblivious of the rights and the sufferings 
of men. The possibility of this wide separation be- 
tween worship and morality is held aloft as a warn- 
ing, and in contrast with what true worship should be. 
"Put Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and 
then retire from him, that he may be smitten, and 
die." David did not perceive this to be murder, be- 
cause it was taking the life of another indirectly and 
circuitously, and in away that did not violate the rules 
of war, and the regulations of the army. He would 
have shrunk with horror at the idea of private assas- 
sination ; and so he reaches the same end indirectly, 
with no sense of guilt upon his conscience. It is the 



DAVID. 15 



same mistake which moral men and religious men 
are very liable to fall into. The violation of the 
neighbor's rights very often goes for nothing, provided 
the means are circuitous, and not direct ; done accord- 
ing to received moral codes, and not by gross personal 
assault and robbery; done according to law, not 
against law. If my neighbor has something which I 
covet myself, I shall not probably break into his 
house, or waylay him in the dark. I am too civilized 
for that. I shall rather blind his eyes to the value 
of things, and get it from him by the rules of trade 
and bargain, and under the glamour of false appear- 
ances, rather than the darkness of the night. And, 
having largely supplied myself in that way, I shall 
be ready for a psalm of thanksgiving, " The Lord is 
my Shepherd; I shall not want." The real nature of 
the crime is concealed under the complications of the 
means through which the end is reached ; and yet, to 
Him who looks through all disguises, it is the same 
thing under a more respectable name. In our civil- 
ized moralities we never kill men outright in order to 
get their money. We build cheap houses, amid 
marshes and miasmas, and rent them at high rates to 
the poor, whose families die off by pestilence. And 
from the fruits of this slaughtering, Christian men 
lie down in green pastures. 

2. And, again, devotion may be so exclusive and 
absorbing as to preclude all knowledge of ourselves. 



1 6 DAVID. 



We may be so intent on praising God as to leave no 
room for thorough self-examination ; and then we may 
fall into the delusion that God is so flattered with our 
exaltations of his excellencies, that He will not hold 
us to a very strict account, and we may live in igno- 
rance of what we really are. And without this self- 
analysis, we may see faults in our neighbors, and even 
be indignant for what they do, when we practise the 
same things ourselves, though with some change of 
circumstance and occasion. 

Worship, when genuine, has a twofold office. It 
draws us up into the Divine communion, and brings 
thence the light of the Divine Justice searching out 
all the hiding-places of the heart, thus revealing us 
true under the light of the Divine countenance. We 
can praise God, and admire his power and magnifi- 
cence, and be-sing his glories, without any of this 
reflex influence that searches out our own sins, and 
illumes all the pages of our book of life within. Such 
was David's state sometimes, amid all his psalms and 
hallelujahs. And while he is in this state of mind, 
Nathan comes to him with a message. And Nathan 
supposes a case. It is the parable of the rich man 
with many flocks and herds, who took the poor man's 
lamb, the only one he had, and killed it, and dressed it 
for his table. David's indignation is greatly kindled 
at such meanness. He was going away, very likely, to 
write a psalm about it, and would probably have turned 



DA VI D. 1 7 



Nathan's touching parable into a splendid lyric for 
the temple, to be set to music, and to chant the Divine 
judgment against oppression. But wait a moment, 
says the prophet. And then he takes the picture, 
and writes under it " David." And the psalm was 
turned into a penitential wail, " My soul is full of 
trouble. All thy billows have gone over me." 

3. And here comes another lesson out of these 
chapters of human nature. We are very apt to fall 
into the mistake, that it is the grossness of sin that 
makes it past forgiveness, — the sin that looks palpable 
like a mountain, and is therefore hopeless and beyond 
recovery. Yet here was a man who broke nearly all 
the commandments of the Decalogue, whose name 
we find in the New Testament numbered among the 
saints of the Church of God. The history brings to 
light, and makes conspicuous, one of the distinc- 
tions in human depravity. There is crime which 
flows from overmastering passion, where the judgment 
is blinded, and the coftscience intoxicated without 
being quenched, when the animal overcomes the man. 
The moral and spiritual nature is not hardened and 
fossilized, but only held in abeyance till it can act 
asrain. But when it does act, there is remorse, and 
acknowledgment of guilt, and heart-breaking sorrow, 
and pity that flows like rain. Such was David in the 
animal and spiritual man that made him up. It is the 
tenderness and moral sensibility under the depravity, 



18 DAVID. 



— sensibility that the Divine Spirit at length takes 
hold of to wash the stains of guilt clean away. There 
is another kind of depravity, — one which comes not 
from the animal nature, but from a perverted spiritual 
nature, when, Iago-like, man is turned into a fiend, 
when evil is put for good, and good for evil, and repent- 
ance is impossible because there is no tender spot in 
the heart to take hold of. These men do not commit 
crimes half so gross and shocking to the ear, perhaps 
never commit any crimes, so cunning are they in 
their methods, and such are the long underground 
trains of evil where they work out of sight, without 
any violations of law. These are the sinners who 
are hopeless, and in whose flinty natures, worn smooth 
by the impinging truths that pass over them, no 
pulse is ever felt. We must keep in mind these reve- 
lations of human nature in the old Bible to under- 
stand aright its punishments and rewards, and the 
glorious possibilities of the pardoning Mercy. We 
must interpret in the light thereof the conditions of 
our own pardon, and those of our fellow-sinners as 
well. The Sovereign Grace can save the chief of 
sinners until the conscience is lost, and the sensibili- 
ties have turned into stone. This our Saviour calls 
the sin against the Holy Spirit, or the sin unto death, 
for which there is no forgiveness. That may be com- 
mitted without any gross transgression. It is secret, 
cunning, subtle, pursuing its ends through systematic 



DAVID. 19 



hypocrisies till the conscience is put out, and the 
moral nature turns to marble. David's sins were 
gross but not hypocritical, those of the animal rather 
than of the fiend ; so his compunctions are terrible. 
His remorse flows like a torrent, and his guilt is 
washed away. 

4. There is another principle of exceeding interest 
which is fully illustrated in the history of David. 
His nature was large and many-sided, infested with 
animal passions in its lower range, and, in its highest 
range, soaring into the region of song, seizing the 
most charming of nature's imagery to illustrate the 
truths ot religion, and set forth the sentiment of devo- 
tion. Hence he becomes the channel of the Divine 
inspirations. He is just one of those men who speak 
wiser than they know. His song sweeps heights 
that he never climbed ; and he became the channel 
of revelations, both of God and of human nature, 
which speak to men's condition through all time. 
Some writers forget, wnen they undertake to criticise 
the word of God, that it was given for the very pur- 
pose of speaking to our sinful human nature ; and, 
therefore, it comes through those who share most 
largely in that nature. A seraph from the third 
heavens never would have come down to the condition 
of our gross and erring humanity. His song would 
have floated over us, without touching us. There 
was a man who lived two hundred years ago, born on 



20 DA VI D. 



the banks of the Avon, — a man whose experience 
went down among the grosser passions and vices, but 
whose genius soared into the clearest and sweetest 
realm of poesy, — a representative man like David. 
And hence he has dramatized human life, both in 
its darker and brighter shadings ; has pictured infernal 
villainy and angelic grace so truly, that, out of the old 
Bible, there is no such revelation anywhere of the 
mysteries and possibilities of the human heart. He 
sung wiser than he knew or ever intended. He 
never knew what mysteries of heart he was revealing. 
And so with David, one of the grossest of sinners, 
and, at the same time, a poetic genius of the highest 
order. And so the struggle of the spirit in him 
against the flesh represents the war in all humanity. 
And the compunctions of sin, and the peace of God 
after victory, men read over to this day, and find 
their own experience mirrored back upon them. 
Even what are called the imprecatory psalms, the 
curses upon David's enemies, come to mean what he 
never intended ; for his enemies become, in the Chris- 
tian's experience, the spiritual foes in his own heart. 
And the whole kingdom of David prefigures the 
kingdom of Christ. And this David, a temporal 
king, with his temporal enemies about him, whom he 
fights, and conquers, and triumphs over, in psalms 
and hallelujahs, is taken to foreshadow Christ, the 
spiritual king, and his kingdom, and his \ ictories over 



DA VI D. 2 1 



the enemies of the soul, — the unbeliefs, the passions, 
and the lusts, which hinder the full coming of the 
Lord in his reign on the earth. And so these songs 
come clown to us to chant our moral victories with 
to-day. 

Such are some of the lessons of this history. And 
this leads me to remark, as to how the Bible should 
be used as a means of religious life. 

We are to discriminate and distinguish always the 
human and the Divine element, both bound up to- 
gether in the same book, and in the same characters 
sometimes, for the very purpose of showing how one 
acts upon the other, how the clear justice of God 
tells upon human depravity. There is a wonderful 
unity in this book. Any one who has read it from 
Genesis to Revelation, and who sees how one part 
unfolds from another, leading on the drama of human 
history under a controlling Providence, will never 
believe that it was produced by mere human art, or 
thrown together hap-ha£ard. He will be convinced 
that it unfolds under a Divine hand, and within the 
breathings of a Divine inspiration, though not a verbal 
one, bringing together just those Divine and human 
elements which we need most to study, if we would 
see human nature as it is, its deepest needs, and its 
abundant supplies out of the treasury of God. No 
novel that was ever written has such a unity, moves 
on to such sublime catastrophes, or shows human 



2 2 DAVID. 



nature through such ranges of height and depth. 
Nowhere are the lowest deeps opened up into 
the sunlight as here. And out of such depths, and 
on such a line of descent, the Christ appears, the 
Son of David, clothing Himself in all this inherited 
humanity, that He might find it, redeem it, and lift it 
heavenward. 

We must take in the old Bible as well as the new, 
if we would see all that man is, and the power of the 
Sovereign Grace to create him anew. Use it again, 
for self-knowledge and personal application. Go to 
the Christian records for the full consolation and 
hope of the gospel ; but go back to these old biog- 
raphies and prophecies to find a light flashing down, 
sometimes into your lowest consciousness, revealing 
the depths out of which we are all kept by the crea- 
tive Word and the Sovereign Grace. If you find in 
this old word depths of depravity almost too shocking 
to look into, remember they are depths out of which 
society has emerged through the Christ, out of 
which it is kept by the power of Christianity, and the 
Holy Spirit which operates through the truth which 
it reveals. By the study of this book, old and new, 
you shall be saved from any closet theories of human 
nature ; and you will see your own hidden life ever- 
more revealed, as in a glass ; and you will pray all the 
more earnestly that that life be hid with Christ in 
God. 



TIBNI AND OMRI. 



I Kings XVI. 22 : "So Tibni died, and Omri reigned." 

THE kingdom of Israel had a succession of rulers 
who vied with each other in depravity and 
wickedness. Ambition, lust, cruelty, idolatry, became 
impersonated in its kings ; and a change of dynasty 
very often turned out to be nothing more than a 
change from one kind of dominant wickedness to 
another. When a new king came upon the throne, 
the hopes and expectations of the people were raised. 
Now, said they, we shall have a new policy ; now the 
old vices will be reformed, and we shall have a bril- 
liant reign of prosperity and virtue. But it often 
turned out that the old ^ices would be reformed, and 
wane and disappear, only that some new phase of 
vice would come. Tibni, the son of Ginath, competes 
with Omri for the throne ; and half the people fol- 
lowed Tibni, and the other half followed Omri ; but 
Omri prevailed, and Tibni died and his faction was 
suppressed. And Omri reigned, and did evil in the 
sight of the Lord, and walked in all the ways of 
Jeroboam. And then Omri died, and Ahab his son 



24 TIBNI AND OMRI. 

reigned in his stead. And he did evil, and slew the 
prophets of the Lord, and set up the worship of 
Baal. And Ahaziah succeeded Ahab, and he did evil. 

And why is all this told us ? and of what use is the 
history of the kingdom of Israel, and its corrupt and 
idolatrous kings ? Simply because these are chapters 
in the book of human nature ; and in turning over its 
leaves we are very often turning over the pages of its 
book of life. A kingdom is the collective man, repre- 
senting, in the complex, the individual man ; and it 
makes all the difference whether the mind itself be 
the kingdom of evil Ahab, or the kingdom of God. 
Indeed, the whole kingdom of Judah prefigured the 
reign of Christ ; and Christ is called a king, the Son 
of David, and his successor, because the earthly type 
foreshadows the heavenly reality. The human mind 
— yes, your own mind individually — is a kingdom in 
itself ; and some ruling passion or principle is regnant 
there over your whole realm of thought, feeling, 
motive, and action. Every mind has a ruling passion 
of some sort. It is Ahab, or it is Christ, enthroned 
within. 

Have you never observed in men the changes that 
are sometimes called reformation, but which are noth- 
ing more than the exchange of one bad principle for 
another ? Have you never observed how one vice in 
a man may be conquered and slain and expelled alto- 
gether, only that another vice, more specious possibly, 



TIB NT AND OMRI. 



and of better aspect, may succeed to the throne, and 
reign there instead, while the character has under- 
gone no radical change whatever? It is Omri sup- 
planting Tibni, and then Ahab coming in the place 
of Omri, and Ahaziah in his place, and so on to the 
end of the chapter, — a whole series of evil reigns, with 
no Christ succeeding them, with only tne difference 
that some are more specious than the rest. 

I. There was a man who inherited a princely 
fortune, but who, in the ardor of youthful passion, 
spent the whole of it in riotous living. Driven out 
from his inheritance, and wandering as a prodigal on 
the earth, he cast back longing and sorrowful glances 
towards the home-mansion, and the green lawns and 
landscapes that lay around it. And he made a vow : 
" I will forsake my bad habits. I will reform. I will 
make money somehow, and win back my inheritance." 
And he did reform. He became a man of thrift and 
temperance and self-denial ; and he clutched for the 
largest gains, and founcl them. And the prodigal 
young man became the hard-featured trader, who 
always took the best end of a bargain. And he won 
back his inheritance, and made its lawns and land- 
scapes more green than ever. Here was self-denial ; 
but it was self denied in one shape, only to be de- 
veloped in another. The vice of the prodigal had 
been denied and killed, and cast out ; and avarice had 
come in its place, and had become enthroned over 



26 TIBNI AND OMRI. 

the whole realm of mind and character. And so 
Tibni died, and Omri reigned. 

2. Again : there are two kinds of worldliness. There 
is secular worldliness and religious worldliness. 
There is the worldliness which makes the world 
minister only to selfish gains and selfish enjoyments; 
which heaps up riches, only to pamper the bodily 
appetites and passions, or the love of luxury and the 
love of show. This is what Paul means by being 
conformed to the world. Then there is the other 
worldliness, looking for the future happiness and the 
future rewards, from motives just as personal and just 
as selfish. The other worldliness does not regard 
the future life and the heavenly mansion as an en- 
larged sphere of usefulness, with enlarged opportu- 
nities for doing good, with the elevation and expan- 
sion of all the faculties for the errands of philan- 
thropy and charity, with new facilities for alleviating 
the miseries of God's universe : it looks upon the 
heavenly life as a scene of lazy enjoyment, where 
there is no work to be done, but only indolent devo- 
tion to be enjoyed, or barren praises to be sung, or 
golden streets to be admired ; while the universe 
outside heaven is still groaning and travailing in pain. 
Such is the other worldliness ; and it is not rare to 
find people converted from one worldliness to the 
other, from secular worldliness to religious, when the 
whole idea of heavenly happiness is a larger and more 
complete and more lazy self-indulgence. 



TIBNI AND OMRI. 



What man ever served the god of this world, with- 
out convictions borne in upon him, sometimes with 
overwhelming power, that his grasp on this world 
is one day to be loosed, that death will unclasp his 
fingers one by one, that all these accumulations must 
be left behind, and that another world, with its im- 
mortal realities and its scenes of glory or of suffer- 
ing, will lie about him ? But selfish scheming, and the 
habit of getting the best end of bargains, uncaring 
who holds the other end, is not the finest preparation 
for apprehending spiritual things, or the nature of 
salvation, or the nature and attributes of God. Sal- 
vation, after such an education as this, is very likely 
to be, just as much as any other transaction, a matter 
of scheme and bargain and selfish policy. It is the 
old policy of selfishness taking a religious form. It 
is the balance of debit and credit transferred from 
the ledger to the spiritual account. It is so many 
prayers, and so much faith in dogmas, made over to 
him, and so much foreign merit imputed to him for 
righteousness ; so much ritual, and so much making 
believe, in order to turn away the wrath of God and 
his punishments. It is an external title to enter 
heaven, to be bought and sold. He never dreams, 
that, before any one enters heaven, heaven must enter 
him. And so the old selfishness, with all its calcu- 
lating policy, is transferred to religion, and rules him 
still, the foundations of character remaining just the 



28 TIBNI AND OMRT. 

same, none of its hard and flinty lines softened down 
or obliterated. His religion has made him no better, 
only changed self from one form to another. The 
god of this world has been given up ; but the god 
of the other world, who comes in his place, is not the 
Lord himself, but a superstition, whose ruling motive 
is lurid fear and selfish hope, and whose servitude is 
quite as slavish as the servitude of this world. And 
so Tibni dies, and Omri reigns. 

3. Again : there is knowledge which is acquired 
for the sake of higher usefulness, and there is knowl- 
edge which is acquired from love of applause or admi- 
ration ; or, again, for selfish pleasure, not for useful- 
ness in the world, and a better qualification to do 
our work in it. Education — that education whose 
prime object is to unfold all our human capabilities, 
and develop a perfect manhood or womanhood — 
looks less to the decorations of life than to its body 
and substance. The female education that fills up 
the outlines of the woman nobly planned will have 
prime reference to work more than to ornament, and 
to faculty more than to accomplishments. How much 
work there is in this world, ere nature becomes sub- 
dued to the use of man and the progress of human- 
ity ! and how much remains undone ! We have 
lectures and conventions, speeches, and books writ- 
ten, to demonstrate woman's right to labor; but 
the truth is, half the women are overworked already, 



TIBNI AND OMRI. 29 



while the other half are only for exhibition. They 
are highly educated, not for work, but for show ; 
not for the art of doing, and doing with such 
skilled execution that all drudgery shall be taken 
out of labor, and woman's sphere be filled with 
those beneficent industries that train all the facul- 
ties into symmetrical grace and proportion. And 
so we read lately of a highly accomplished woman 
who had been educated here in the East, who 
starved to death because she could find nothing 
to do. Music and French and drawing were good 
in their way and in their sphere ; but, when the 
strain and stress came, no faculty had been touched 
and trained to meet the conflicts of life. And so in a 
place where there was work all around, and woman's 
work too, that waited to be done, the highly educated 
girl could not do it ; and lay down and starved and 
died. Indolence, and the love of languishing ease, 
had been overcome ; but vanity had come in their 
place, and shaped the whole plan of study, and deter- 
mined the whole style of character. Self in one 
shape had given way ; and self in another and more 
specious form had succeeded. The kingdom within 
had changed one dynasty for another, while the 
foundations of character remained just the same, 
and just as frail and flimsy. And so, again, Tibni 
died, and Omri reigned. 

4. And the same is true in a great many of those 



30 TIBNI AND OMRI. 

changes of opinion, or conversions from one faith to 
another, which, when you sift them, are nothing 
more than the change of one form of self-opinion for 
another. Faith really progressive is always humble. 
Its enlarging view is like the ascent of an acclivity, 
giving at every step a wider horizon, and a purer 
air, above the clouds and the storms. But, in order 
to gain such a faith, one must always hold the atti- 
tude of a learner and a disciple. In the place of 
these, may come the pride of science, the conceit of 
opinion, or the dogmatism of sect. And a man may 
renounce the dogmas of superstition, and become a 
convert to the dogmas of infidelity, and be a greater 
bigot than ever, without any of that radical change 
of character which places his mind in sweet and 
humble attitude toward all the Divine revelations, 
whether from the spirit world or the natural. No 
matter what a man is converted from, or converted 
to, so long as he does not hold his opinions with the 
spirit of a child : it is one dynasty going out, and 
another coming, just as hard and despotic as the 
former. How many of these sudden conversions 
which we hear of, from one sect to another, are not 
progressions of faith, but revolutions of self-opinion ! 
So we find represented in these old scriptures 
those changes and revolutions in our inner world of 
thought and passion, which never make a man better, 
but only change the form of his own selfhood. There 



TIBNI AND OMRI. 31 

is no such revelation anywhere else, of the mysteries 
of human nature; and it even flashes forth through 
the proper names of the Old Testament, which be- 
come the labels of the passions that stir in human 
hearts everywhere. Every mind has some ruling 
love that gives unity and direction to all its powers. 
The ruling love changes sometimes through the 
whole of a man's life, taking one form in youth, 
.another in manhood, and another still in age ; one 
form in men, and another form in women. In youth, 
it may be love of pleasure ; in manhood, love of 
glory; and, in age, love of ease : in women, it may be 
love of show ; in men, love of money, — and all only 
self in variant shapes, with only the difference that 
one is a more handsome and successful imitation of 
goodness than another, but without any soul of good- 
ness in it. Conversion to Christ puts the soul of 
goodness into all. Then business has a new aim, — 
Christian living and beneficence. Education has a 
new aim, — to fit men and women to do something for 
social progress, and for lifting the burdens of human- 
ity. Female education has a new aim, — the truest 
and most substantial womanhood, for work and not for 
show ; and young women need not wait for a political 
revolution before they begin an education, physical, 
moral, and intellectual, to fit them for the noble mis- 
sion they are called to. I do not believe that there is 
any public opinion which bars woman from learning 



2,2 TIBNI AND OMRI. 

any thing or doing any thing in this world which she 
will do well ; and, suppose there is, what has she to 
do but to disregard it, and revolutionize it, as the first 
success will be sure to do? Fealty to the Divine 
Master will give her the will and the power. And, 
the whole line of evil reigns once given up for the 
reign of Christ, there is no change of faith after that, 
but from glory to glory. Tibni dies, and all his line 
becomes extinct, that Christ may become all in all. 
No need of going from one sect to another, for that is 
only a change from one human master to another. 
The Christ involves and comprehends them all, and a 
great deal more besides ; and change, with Him, is 
nearing the sun-bright summits which overlook all 
the fields of thought, and from which all the artificial 
lines of division fade away and disappear. When the 
reign of Christ comes in, and the reign of Ahab and 
all his line goes out, the end for which you live will 
be to do the work of Christ here on the earth, to 
leave the earth better than you found it. Education, 
all education, is for godly and beneficent living. 
Preparation for death is a preparation for larger and 
more angelic activities, with those who are more swift 
to do God's will; because the fetters of earth have 
broken away, and the reign of Christ supplants every 
form of self, and becomes all in all. 



PILATE. 



John XVIII. 37 : " Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king, then ? 
Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and 
for this cause came I into the world." 

TO understand the whole scene of Jesus before 
Pilate, we must remember the state of mind in 
the Roman governor. He is at a loss what to do, 
and he hardly knows what he is saying. He echoes 
mechanically the word " truth," which had just fallen 
from the lips of Jesus. He is afraid of his prisoner ; 
for the real character of Jesus beams out on his trial 
with commanding majesty. Jesus had said, " My 
kingdom is not of this world." — "Art thou a king, 
then ? " says Pilate, disposed at first to a little banter 
and cavil. Then comes the reply, which has since 
been cited as the highest reach of the moral sublime, 
t( Yes, I am a king " (so we should render). " To this 
end was I bora, and for this cause came I into the 
world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. 
Every one who is of the truth heareth my voice." — 
" Truth," echoes Pilate timidly. " What is truth ? I 
don't understand." And, shrinking both from an 



34 PILATE. 



acquittal and from condemnation of Jesus, he went 
out to talk with the Jews privately, and persuade 
them of the innocence of Jesus. 

I do not know of any character drawn so true to 
the life, with so few touches, as the character of Pilate 
in the narrative ; and it proves irresistibly, with simi- 
lar touches elsewhere, the authenticity of the fourth 
Gospel. Nobody could have imagined this. Observe 
the man and his difficulties. He is the Roman gov- 
ernor of Judaea, under Tiberius Caesar. There are 
three parties whom he is anxious not to offend. The 
tyrant will recall him if there is trouble in his prov- 
ince which he cannot manage, when he must go back 
to Rome in disgrace. On the other hand, the Jews 
hate the Roman power, and, if not gratified, will 
chafe under it, and rebel. Both these two parties 
must be pleased. Then there is a third. He has 
some dregs of conscience in him yet; and he would 
like to do right, if he can without producing trouble 
and agitation. His wife has had a dream, warning 
him against participating in the death of Christ; and 
his superstitions are alarmed. So he trembles and 
vacillates between fear of the emperor, fear of the 
Jews, and fear of his own conscience within. He 
knows his prisoner is innocent, and that simple jus- 
tice demands of him to pronounce acquittal from the 
judgment-seat. But this man claims to be a king. 
" Ah ! they will be sending reports of me to Rome, 



PILA TE. 35 



that I have winked at treason ; and there will be 
trouble there." He attempts various expedients. 
First, he tries to cajole these Jews, and persuade 
them to release Jesus. They refuse, and demand his 
life. Then Pilate tries to put the responsibility upon 
them. " Take him, and crucify him yourselves." 
They remind him that the Jewish tribunals have not 
the power of capital punishment. Jesus must be put 
to death, if at all, under Roman law, of which you, 
Pilate, are the magistrate. Then Pilate makes an- 
other shift. Herod of Galilee is at Jerusalem ; and 
Pilate sends his prisoner to Herod, pretending that 
the case belongs to Herod's jurisdiction. Herod 
sends Him back. Then Pilate orders Christ to be 
scourged, thinking that by this the Jews will be satis- 
fied, and sends Him out before them bleeding from 
the thongs, and says, " Only look upon the man." So 
far from being pacified, their rage kindles anew at the 
sight of blood ; and " Crucify him ! " goes up from the 
whole multitude. At last Pilate delivers up his pris- 
oner to be crucified by his own soldiers, but orders 
water to be brought, and washes his hands before the 
people, saying, " I am innocent. See ye to it. His 
blood be upon you." 

This is Pilate, eminently a representative man. 
We know something of him from profane history; but 
in this record he stands out with more amazing in- 
dividuality. He personifies one of the types of human 



36 PILATE. 



character, with indescribable naturalness, and is an- 
other name for vacillation and indecision. Let us 
take him now to represent this style of action ; and, 
having seen where its weakness lies, let us pass on, 
and see how it may be cured, and how indecision may 
be turned into Christian strength and energy. 

Four things will indicate the marks and symptoms 
of this infirmity of human nature, and show us when 
we are sliding into it. 

1. The first is a disposition to put off our responsi- 
bilities upon others, and deny the jurisdiction of our 
own essential duties. And, when we wish to avoid a 
disagreeable duty, and try to put it upon Herod, we 
generally do it under pleas and pretences which are 
very specious, and which serve to flatter our self-love. 
Oh, our qualifications are not equal to it ! Our expe- 
rience is small, and some one else will do a great deal 
better than we can. Under this charming guise of 
amiability and modesty, we are complimenting, at the 
same time, our own humility, and the rare talent and 
ability of our friend over the way. Some persons 
pass through life shunning responsibilities which 
fairly belong to them, solely through that fear of man 
which bringeth a snare. And so there are vast 
powers which are never used, and vast energies 
which are never developed. Even in making up the 
judgments that belong to us, how liable are we to 
betake ourselves to the sheltering judgment of some 



PILATE. 37 



one else, in any case which involves censure and 
agitation. An emphatic yes or no from our own 
judgment-seat might settle at once and forever a 
question which otherwise is kept open for controversy 
and dissension, as the question is tossed to and fro 
between Herod and Pilate. Between a positive faith 
in Christianity, and a clean rejection thereof, we 
must find a middle ground, — between two wings a 
place that will offend neither ; and we must shun 
all controversy, and keep the peace, not remember- 
ing that it is the positive and negative of the electric 
currents, which, coming together, forge the thunder- 
bolts that shake the air. 

2. The second expedient of this infirmity of human 
nature is compromise, or trying to get into some half- 
way house between right and wrong, between truth 
and falsehood. Some half-measure will probably sat- 
isfy both Tiberius and the people ; and then our own 
consciences are soothed and drugged with the reflec- 
tion that we have prevented a more terrible evil by 
choosing a less one. An overwhelming yes or no 
would have pushed things to extremes, whereas a 
negative positive will keep them on middle ground 
between the two. This has been tersely called, split- 
ting the difference between God and the Devil ; and 
when we do this, we do not consider that the latter 
power is mightily strengthened by the process, and 
emboldened mightily to ask more. Thus every com- 



38 PILATE. 



promise necessitates two more ; and they increase in 
geometrical ratio, until the adversary has us com- 
pletely under his feet. Half-measures with iniquity 
make it stronger. The scourging excites no compas- 
sion, but whets the appetite for blood till the cry 
of '' Crucify !" rises with more unappeasable thirst for 
vengeance. 

3. The third expedient of this infirmity of our 
nature is, to shift the blame upon others after the 
wrong is done. Acting from this state of mind, we 
never take any share of the guilt ourselves, for we 
think it all belongs to those bad people who made the 
excitement. The Pilates of all ages ward off their 
self-accusations by blaming their circumstances, never 
dreaming that it is the special duty and preroga- 
tive of human virtue to conquer circumstances, and 
change them. And to help on this expedient, and 
persuade ourselves of innocence, we are very apt to 
resort to religious rites and ceremonies. The Jewish 
law required, that when a murder had been com- 
mitted, and the murderer was undiscovered, the 
elders of the city should wash their hands over an 
animal offered in sacrifice ; saying, " Our hands have 
not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. 
Lay not this innocent blood to thy people's charge." 
And then the guilt of the murder should not rest 
upon the city. Similar rites of purgation belonged 
to the Greek and Roman religions. It is the last 



FILA TE. 39 



expedient employed to dim the consciousness of 
responsibility, to wash out the stains upon the con- 
science, not by repairing the wrong, but by the shows 
and mummeries of a pious ceremony. Guilt becomes 
the most hopeless and deep-seated, when it conceals 
itself under the hypocrisies of religious rites ; and 
the conscience is then most effectually drugged and 
silenced. 

4. The last thing which characterizes this infirmity 
of character is, that it falls with tenfold disaster into 
the very ruin it seeks to shun. Let us travel a little 
beyond the record, and see what became of this 
Roman magistrate, who sought a half-way house be- 
tween right and wrong. He lost the confidence of 
all parties, and was called back to Rome in disgrace. 
Herod, who was made his friend that day, became his 
bitterest enemy. The dream of his wife, foreboding 
evil, was more than realized. The faint remnants 
of conscience, which appeared at the trial of Jesus, 
were soon extinguished ;*and Pilate became intoler- 
ably cruel. The Jews hated him, and accused him to 
the empsror; Herod hated him; the emperor hated 
him, and banished him to Gaul ; he hated himself 
and his own life, and died miserably by his own hand. 
Such is the finish of the picture of this sleek Roman 
magistrate, who sought a half-way house between 
right and wrong, but perished without finding it. 

Eighteen hundred years have passed away, and 



PILA TE. 



Jesus is again before Pilate ; and the same ques- 
tion comes up anew, Art thou a king, then ? " Yes," 
says Jesus, " I am a king. I was born to be a king, 
and to this end came I into the world. Ye call 
me Master and Lord ■ and ye say well, for so I am." 
And yet we are now told there are two parties, 
both of which must be satisfied, and compromised 
with. One bows in acknowledgment of the immac- 
ulate purity and the authority of Jesus : the other 
party denies these ; says He made mistakes, and was 
sinful, and was vindictive, and that the story of His 
life and miracles is myth and fable. Stripped of all 
soft and deceptive language, that is the issue between 
what are called the extremes of the Unitarian denom- 
ination ; and we are told that we must find some 
middle way between these extremes, some split be- 
tween a yes and a no on this plain question. "We 
must lean as flexibly as we can both ways," — this 
is the language of the council of the National Con- 
ference, — " as flexibly as we can both ways, without 
losing our balance." I think that a denomination 
which undertakes the work of Pilate, " leaning flexi- 
bly both ways," will find the doom of Pilate, which is 
suicide. For, lift up your eyes, and see ! He cometh 
in his kingdom ; and his own words, " I am a king, 
and to this end was I born, and for this came I into 
the world," have still their daily fulfilment ; for still 
He rules both the foremost thought and practice of 



PI LA TE. 41 



the ages. And his church, more than ever conscious 
of his presence and inworking Divine energy, origi- 
nates, leads on, and inspires all the advanced civiliza- 
tions of the world, and the sweetest self-sacrifice in 
the cause of humanity. Is this an hour to stand and 
play the game of Pilate, when the words "/ am a 
kin?" are having: their fulfilment over the world and 
adown the centuries ; when He comes to rule right 
royally over all this clear, earnest, and comprehensive 
faith, which, amid darkness and vacillation and doubt 
and uncertainty, opens the portals of immortality, 
shows both worlds in their organic relations with 
each other, and lights up the river of death with 
the splendors of an everlasting morning ? 

There is still another and more special and individ- 
ual application. The subject, I think, rebukes all our 
half-professions in Christianity; all that halting disci- 
pleship which would make the gospel a compromise 
between Christ and the world, between religion and 
philosophy. He is indeed*king to us, or He is nothing. 
He has no claim over us any more than Socrates or 
Seneca, nor so much as the philosophers of to-day, 
who have all the light of the new science and dis- 
covery; or else He has all claim over us, over faith and 
affection and life and practice, as that power of the 
Godhead which takes up our weak and lowly natures, 
creates them anew in his own image and likeness, 
and enriches them with the inbreathing and indwell- 



42 PI LA TE. 



ings of the Holy Ghost. For it is either unwarranted 
assumption, or else it is tender invitation out of the 
depths of heaven, — the voice which comes to us even 
to-day, " All that the Father hath is mine ; " " Come 
unto me, and I will give you rest." None that have 
come ever found those words deceptive or untrue ; for 
it is rest from distraction and doubt, rest from weak- 
ness and vacillation, rest from the troublous uprisings 
of conscience, rest from debates whether there be any 
future life, or any God even, and repose on the bosom 
of his forgiving and cleansing love, within the peace 
and the sunshine of an eternal world. 



THE GOURD. 



Jonah IV. 9 : " Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd ? " 

PERHAPS no book has been the subject of so 
much banter and ridicule, among persons some 
of whom probably never studied or even read it, as 
the Book of Jonah. It is one of the minor prophets, 
not written by Jonah himself, but by some one who 
makes the name and history of the prophet the frame- 
work on which to hang some great clustering truths. 
It was written — so say the best critics — about four 
hundred years before Christ, and makes the tradi- 
tional facts in the life of a prophet, who had lived, say 
a hundred years before, the basis of some important 
ethical doctrines addressed to the time and age. 
The form of it was just the one to be addressed to a 
Hebrew people of that age. The essence and spirit 
of it are beyond that age, and beyond this age as well. 
If you should ask me whether I believe the fact that 
stands out boldly in the body of the narrative — the 
swallowing of Jonah by a sea-monster, and the casting 
him up again — is to be believed, I should say for 
myself, I should never think of believing it, any more 



THE GOURD. 



than I should think of believing as fact the frame and 
dress of " Pilgrim's Progress." It is of no conse- 
quence whether it were fact or not. I do not believe 
that Hamlet ever saw his father's ghost in just the 
way he describes the scene, nor that Macbeth ever 
saw Banquo's ghost with the long line of future kings, 
nor that Shakspeare believed he did. None the less 
do we receive the wonderful revelations of human 
nature found in those two tragedies. I do not sup- 
pose the narrative of the Prodigal Son is given to us 
in Luke as biography, or that Jesus cared whether 
we received it as such, or not. Of this Book of Jonah, 
however, two things are very obvious. There must 
have been an historical basis for it; and such a man 
must have lived and acted. The book is as full of 
human nature as it could well hold, and has such a 
human savor about it as gives it an air of intense 
reality. Then, again, the highest religious truths are 
so imbedded in the narrative, it is so packed with 
them we might say, that its allegorical character can- 
not be mistaken. The omnipresent voice of Divine 
rebuke that always follows us when we shirk our 
duty, or run away from the mission we are called to ; 
the trouble that follows and involves us ; the all- 
abounding Divine Mercy, free forgiveness on repent- 
ance and turning to the Lord ; salvation even for the 
heathen on these conditions, a doctrine shocking to 
Jewish prejudice ; the ail-controlling and guiding 



THE GOURD. 45 



Providence that uses the individual for its great 
ends, the Providence of God in little things as well 
as great, in the withering of a plant not less than in 
the destruction of a city, anticipating our Saviour's 
doctrine of the sparrow's fall, — these are all conspic- 
uous on the face of the narrative. They shine out 
clearly above the discoveries of that age, and above 
the theology even of this age. 

But the personal history of the prophet himself is 
marvellously instructive. Jonah is emphatically and 
largely a representative man. There are two classes 
of troubles to which we are all subjected, and which 
sometimes have the very opposite influences on our 
tempers and lives. How often do you find that the 
small troubles are the hardest ones to bear ! Yea, 
that our little griefs are the ones which bring the 
greatest amount of vexation and suffering. The great 
sorrows bring their own compensations and remedies : 
they melt us down into a sweet humility and tender- 
ness, and bring us very % near to the Lord. The 
smaller griefs have sometimes exactly the opposite 
results. They chafe and irritate, and drive us far 
away from the Divine refuge and love. What a burst 
of devotion came from the prophet when his great 
trouble overwhelmed him ! 

" I cried by reason of my distress to the Lord, 

And he heard me. 

Out of the depth of the underworld I cried, 



46 THE GOURD. 



And thou didst hear my voice. 

Thou didst cast me into the deep, into the heart of the sea; 

And the flood compassed me about. 

All thy billows and thy waves passed over me ; 

And I said, I am cast out before thine eyes, 

Yet I will look again to thy holy temple. 

The waters compassed me about, even to the life : 

The deep enclosed me round about ; 

Sea-weeds were bound around my head ; 

I sank down to the foundations of the mountains ; 

The bars of the earth were about me forever. 

Thou hast brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God ! 

When my soul fainted within me, 1 remembered the Lord ; 

And my prayer came to thee, to thy holy temple." 

The whole description shows that the waves of a 
mighty trouble had broken over him, and that they 
woke the most fervid aspirations, and the most sub- 
lime and undoubting faith in God. 

But now the scene changes : deliverance came; and 
our hero is sitting down on the eastern side of Nine- 
veh, but in a frame of mind how vastly different ! He 
is sick of life, and weary of the world. He wishes 
himself dead, and exclaims, " It is better for me to 
die than to live ! " What is the matter now ? Has 
the wave of some heavier calamity broken over him ? 
Has he been plunged into depths of woe more terri- 
ble than the maw of the sea-monster that swallowed 
him up ? Is it a more bitter calamity that now 
changes his strain of devotion to a wail of despair ? 



THE GOURD. 47 



Oh, no ! not that, but his gourd has wilted. It 
sprang up in a night ; and he got under its shelter, 
and Jonah was exceedingly glad of the gourd. But a 
worm gnawed at the root of it, as worms are very apt 
to do, and so the gourd withered away ; and now 
Jonah is without consolation. One would think it no 
great matter for him to change his position; but there 
he sits doggedly in the hot sun, and curses his fate. 
And the Lord said to him, " Doest thou well, to be 
angry for the gourd ?" And he replied, " I do well 
to be angry, even unto death." And the curtain 
falls ; and Jonah passes from our view forever, in this 
most uncomfortable and distressing frame of mind. 

Even so. While we apply our religious theories to 
the greater sorrows, we are very apt to leave out the 
smaller ones, and lose all the good concealed in them. 
To endure small griefs well, and turn them to good 
account, is evidence, undoubtedly, of a more advanced 
spiritual culture, than is shown in enduring great 
griefs. It is quite as important to take these small 
griefs up into the economy of life, and discern their 
meaning, for the reason that the small ones beset us 
every day, whereas the great ones come but once or 
twice in a lifetime, and perhaps, when they do come, 
break open for us a way of entrance into the Divine 
love. 

These small trials are of two kinds. There are 
some which come from within. They are produced 



THE GOURD. 



by no external event whatsoever : not even the loss 
of the gourd can be put in as the cause of them ; but 
a man's surroundings, of whatever kind, only excite 
and manifest them, and take on their shades and 
colorings. They are projections which some people 
make from their own souls, and which thence form 
the world they live in. Just as the soul which rays 
out warmth and sunshine will make all outward things 
take on its own irradiations ; so the soul whose chronic 
state is dark and troublous, will surely ray out the 
darkness upon all things. Such an one will overlay 
with darkness the most blessed sunshine that ever 
fell on terrestrial objects, and make them reflect the 
hues of his own heart ; whereas he whose soul flings 
out of itself the sunshine of a benevolent disposition 
will make it gild the darkest places with a heavenly 
light. So, then, in a most important sense, we create 
the world we live in every day. Its events and envi- 
ronments are simply the material which God fur- 
nishes ; and out of ourselves comes the energy that 
makes them into hideous shapes and robes them in 
sombre hues, or else clothes them in the colors of 
a kindly heart and a heavenly mind. And hence 
the little troubles or the little mercies of the hour. 
Even if his gourd had not wilted, this peevish prophet 
would have rayed the trouble out of him, sitting there 
in sight of Nineveh, with its six hundred thousand 
inhabitants, angry with the Lord because he would 



THE GOURD. 49 



not destroy the city, that he, Jonah, might have the 
honor of uttering a prediction. Just like the men 
who are always foreboding ruin and disaster, and who 
think, for that reason, that ruin and disaster are 
bound to come, and who are exceedingly disappointed 
unless these do come. Here, after all, was the seat 
of the trouble, and not the loss of the gourd. 

However, these little griefs are not all of them 
pure creations from within. The minor troubles do 
beset us, sometimes coming into the house as unwel- 
come guests and there taking up their abode, some- 
times springing upon us from coverts, unawares. 
They may be the very hardest to bear because we 
have no philosophy to apply to them. For great 
sorrows, we have the consolations of religion and 
the sympathy of friends. These others are too small 
for consolation and condolence. They do not crush 
into us like the great ones, but come drop, drop, with 
chafings and corrodings ; and so we think we do well 
to be angry for the gourd. * 

But we do not well ; and we are liable to three mis- 
takes about them, which being once understood, we 
shall be able very thoroughly to disarm them. 

Our first mistake is, that we think that there is a 
special Providence in the great troubles, but no 
Providence at all in the small ones. When destruc- 
tion yawned to receive him, the prophet recognized 
the hand of God, and betook himself to prayer: "All 



50 THE GOURD. 



thy billows have gone over me ; " but when his gourd 
wilted, he took to cursing, evidently not supposing 
that God was in the small event just as much as 
in the greater. As if He who made the great sea- 
monster that roved in the deep waters, did not 
fashion just as much the little worm that ate into the 
roots of the vine that shaded the prophet's temples. 
So it is always. Great calamities are " ordered," we 
say ; and so we are awe-struck and subdued, and sub- 
mit with the best possible grace. And yet the small 
events are ordered in just the sense that the great 
ones are ; since the great ones, when you analyze 
them, are nothing else than a congeries of ten thou- 
sand little ones ; and it were absurd to say that God 
is in the whole, and not in all the little threads and 
fibres that make up the millionth part. Just as the 
Divine Omnipresence glows in the little violet which 
you tread under your feet, not less than in the troops 
of stars that whirl in mighty constellations through 
the rounds of space, so the Divine Providence is 
not less in small events than in great catastrophies. 
This being always acknowledged, you will no more 
be angry because the gourd has wilted, than you 
will be angry because there fell at your side the friend 
whom you composed with reverence and prayer to 
his everlasting rest. 

But again : these Jonahs are very apt to make 
another mistake, — that of thinking they have more to 



THE GOURD. 51 



bear than other people have, and that their annoy- 
ances are very peculiar. They think, very likely, 
that every path but their own is a path of roses. 
The worms that eat at the root of the gourd come 
most to our fields and gardens ; the accidents of life 
break in upon our domestic arrangements, while the 
arrangements of others keep on without interruption ; 
and those others lead a charmed life, and so keep their 
tempers sweet and cool, while ours are constantly 
pricked and fevered with the nettles and the thorns. 
But you would find, I think, if the domestic history 
of any family were unrolled to you, that each had its 
full share of these minor troubles ; that they fall 
about equally over the surface of society, and are 
distributed somewhat on the principle of the rain. 
Sometimes there is more here, and less there ; but 
the average quantity is about the same every year, 
and alike in one place, as another of the same latitude. 
So these infinitesimal griefs are distributed silent and 
unseen, as indispensable in* the probation of man. 

But we are liable to still another mistake. As 
with all other little things, we are very likely to 
undervalue them as tests of character, and as having 
a mighty and transforming power upon our whole 
inward being, and shaping the very soul itself to its 
high destiny. In the small trials, the action of the 
soul is perfectly free and spontaneous ; and so its 
very flavor and quality are made manifest. It is not 



52 THE GOURD. 



so in the great trials, when the mighty billows break 
over us, and we bend like an osier to the waves. In 
those great trials, there is one-half of our nature that 
is hushed and held in abeyance ; and, under the 
Divine compassion, it might be like sailors in a 
storm, we repent of our sins, and bow down in 
prayer. How fervently the prophet prayed out of 
what he calls the bowels of hell ! What else could 
he do ? He must seek the Divine refuge then, for 
nothing else remained. It is quite otherwise when 
he sits at ease, and waits to see Nineveh destroyed. 
Then he acts himself ; and his soul rays out of him 
without hinderance. In the great trials, the Lord 
bends us, and holds us in his hand. In the little 
ones, we spring back to our normal condition ; and so 
we put our very selves into these, and fill them out 
with just what we are. See, then, how vastly impor- 
tant is their place in the great school of Providence, 
that trains us for immortality. The little trials are, 
in fact, the only real ones ; for those do try us, and 
test our quality, and show to what extent our regen- 
eration is advancing. When rent by ghastly wounds, 
we lie submissive and bleeding. When pricked by 
thorns, our spirit rays out of us its own fragrance ; 
and when the very spirit of Christ — gentleness, 
goodness, and long-suffering — flows out spontane- 
ously into the smaller trials, and makes them fra- 
grant with the breath of heaven, then only are we 



THE GOURD. 53 



ripening for the heavenly abodes. See their place, 
then, in the school of probation we are going 
through, and how constantly and surely they are 
passing judgment on our inward state and qualities. 

In truth, we are not fit for any great trial or emer- 
gency until we have first learned to pass through the 
smaller ones with serenity and meekness, any more 
than a child is fit for the higher schools until he first 
learns the rudiments and the alphabet. The smaller 
trials of every day are the primary schools of Provi- 
dence ; and out of these, if at all, we pass to the 
higher ones, and take up the sublimer and more tri- 
umphal strains, " I am persuaded, that neither death 
nor life, nor the principalities and powers of angels, 
nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, 
nor depth, nor any power in the whole creation, shall 
be able to separate us from the love of God, which is 
in Christ Jesus our Lord." 



SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION. 



John V. 25 : " Verily I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when 
the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God : and they that hear shall live." 

IT was a scene of desolation and death. Jesus 
looked around him, and saw among the Jewish 
people only a dead formalism, and among the Gentile 
people only stolid ignorance of all spiritual things. 
There was the droning of the synagogues, but the 
worship had become dead, — worship in which there 
was very little knowledge of God, or love of men; and 
outside the synagogues were the heathen population, 
among whom belief in their own gods had ceased to 
be operative. It is in reference to this state of things 
that Jesus says to the Jews, " The time is coming, 
and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the 
Son of God : and they that shall listen to it shall 
live." 

The words very soon were fulfilled. Jesus departs 
from Judaea into Galilee, He leaves Jerusalem, where 
his message was rejected, and in Galilee organizes his 
two bands of disciples, the twelve and the seventy; 
and they go out and preach. It was not many 



SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION. 55 

months before all Galilee was shaken from sleep. 
Jesus says, when they bring back reports of their 
mission, " I see Satan as lightning falling from 
heaven. I see his power going out like a meteor 
trailing down the sky." The revolution which began 
in Galilee rolled up to Jerusalem ; and the powers 
there saw that they must go down under it, unless 
they could put the Author of it out of the way. They 
did put Him out of the way ; and they brought Him 
more directly into the way again ; for He came to his 
church and his people from the spiritual side in the 
power of his resurrection. 

It is the moral resurrection which is described in 
the text : waking out of spiritual torpor and death at 
the voice of the Son of God. The words of the text, 
however, had their fulfilment, not alone at that hour, 
and there in Palestine, but ever since, when men 
listen to the voice of the Son of God. But what is 
this spiritual awakening, this new consciousness in 
human nature, produced by the voice of Christ, when 
they that listen do live ? The resurrection from death 
unto life through the voice of the Christ in the human 
sotd, — let us make this the theme of discourse this 
Easter morning. 

"Spiritual deaths "sleeping in the dust," "dead 
in sin," "lying in the grave," all this phraseology is 
used in the New Testament to describe a state of 
religious indifference and insensibility. It is want of 



56 SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION. 

thought, want of interest, want of care or attention 
towards the great questions that appeal to man as a 
spiritual being. The indifference may not be uniform 
and unbroken ; but with many persons it prevails at 
last, and quenches all earnest faith and all deep and 
fervid sensibility. The most confirmed unbeliever is 
not uniformly indifferent. He may have only post- 
poned the question for a convenient season, that 
never comes. There are times when a light from 
jubove flashes down among his faculties, and startles 
him with a glimpse of the mysterious grandeur of his 
being. " What went before me, and what will follow," 
says one of these men, " T regard as two black, im- 
penetrable curtains which hang down at the extremi- 
ties of human life, and which no living man has yet 
drawn aside. Behind the curtain of futurity a deep 
silence reigns. None who have once penetrated the 
veil will answer those they have left behind. All you 
can hear is a hollow echo of your question, as if you 
shouted into a chasm." And having shouted into 
the chasm, and got no answer, he concludes no 
answer is to be had ; and so buries himself deeper, 
and sleeps sounder than ever, in his spiritual grave. 
But let us come more directly to the signs and indica- 
tions of spiritual death. 

I call that a state of spiritual death where there 
is no earnest inquiry in regard to fundamental truth, 
where there is no time set apart for the subject, 



SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION. 57 

where it is never approached with the brooding spirit 
of thought. This indifference often takes the form 
of a false liberality, or an affected contempt for dis- 
putes and controversies about religion. Its language 
sometimes is, " I am sick of hearing about doctrines 
concerning which nobody agrees. Let them have the 
whole dispute to themselves. I stand aloof. I care 
nothing about it. I mind my own business, being 
quite sure that there can't be much good in that 
which is the subject of so much division and dis- 
agreement." If the point of the objection were, that 
we ought not to approach in a wrong temper of mind 
a subject of so much consequence, it were all well. 
But more than this is implied in this train of remark. 
It is an aversion to the whole subject of gospel truth, 
an unwillingness to enter in earnest upon its lessons. 
And what a position is this f6r a rational and immor- 
tal mind to hold and defend ! God is seeking to come 
to us, and find us, and enrich us with Himself. His 
word and his works cop/ out his eternal mind, and 
show forth his purposes, and proclaim his perfect will. 
It is against these that such a person closes his eyes 
or turns away, and says, " I care nothing about it." 
Well do the Scriptures compare this indifference to 
sleep in the grave. The man who sleeps is, for the 
time being;, dead to all the magnificence about him. 
The light of the morning is pouring through his win- 
dows, the earth is rejoicing as if created anew, and a 



58 SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION. 

thousand objects have put on afresh their garments 
of beauty and brightness. But all this is lost upon 
the man who sleeps : his mind is a blank, or he con- 
verses only with phantoms ; he is insensible as the 
clods beneath him to all the glowing scenery that 
opens above and around him. It is just so with 
those who are spiritually asleep. There is a world of 
spiritual light against which their eyes are closed ; 
there is a system of truth which explains the myste- 
ries of our lowly condition ; there is a Christianity 
which sheds a Divine radiance over all our affairs, 
and opens a world within us and a world beyond, 
revealing its objects in colors of heavenly brightness. 
And all this has no existence to those that are asleep, 
who will not inquire and learn, and come to the truth 
as it is in Jesus. Maintain, if you will, this indiffer- 
ence, but know also that the morning hath strewn 
the earth with light, and that skies you never look 
upon are bending over you. 

Again : that is religious indifference where one 
makes no inquiries about himself, the condition of his 
own mind and heart, how he stands affected toward 
God, and whether or not he is prepared to meet Him 
in judgment. He should not only ask what is true, but 
he should ask specifically what are the conditions of 
his salvation, and whether or not he has complied with 
them. He is asleep, he is dead, who has not revolved 
this question with all that solicitude and care which 



SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION. 59 

its importance demands. For we stand affected 
toward God, and toward his universe, and toward 
eternity, by the state of mind and heart within us ; 
for here are the causes that create for every man a 
paradise or a hell. " What shall it profit a man if he 
gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? " Un- 
doubtedly the question crosses everybody's mind, 
more or less. " What am I, and what shall I be- 
come?" But with the man not perseveringly insensi- 
ble, it will be more than a casual inquiry. He will 
often retire into himself ; he will come with a silent 
and reverent mind to his Bible, and give himself 
thoroughly to the work of examination. He will 
know whether or not he can "read his title clear;" 
and he will revolve the question with the charter of 
his salvation open before him. Who are those men 
who come with ripe experience, with heaven-lifted 
eyes, with trust which the world cannot shake, and 
with a piety which the world cannot chill ? Did they 
sleep themselves into such a state of mind ? No. 
They come from watchings and private communings, 
which sometimes, even at midnight, have " chased 
repose from their eyelids." They are those who have 
retired often from the strife of men and the conflicts 
of business, and sent home questionings of them- 
selves. And often have they found, that when with 
the world, they felt satisfied with themselves, yet 
when retired, and looking into their hearts, the sins 



60 SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION. 

of years would " stream o'er their memories like a 
flame ; " and, when holding to their minds the mirror 
of God's word, gleams of eternity, not less vivid, 
would reveal them to themselves. These are the 
hours when the answer to the question, " What shall 
I do to be saved ? " comes at length distinct and 
definite, and when the problem of destiny is solved. 
However much of stir and of noise one may make in 
the world, yet he is asleep in its dust, he is insensi- 
ble to those things which are of eternal importance to 
himself, unless he comes earnestly to this business of 
self-examination. 

Again : I call that a state of spiritual death, where 
there is no confession of the religion of Christ, no 
combination and effort to extend its sway. Any one 
who has had a living experience of the hope, the 
peace, the renovation, which comes of religious faith, 
will hear ever the call within him to impart it. 
Hence the church of Christ, if the Christ live within 
it, is by necessity a missionary society. It is a force 
in the world, to redeem the world and save it ; and, 
where the Christ is truly received, He gathers his 
followers around Him as their living Head, and fulfils 
his promise with them, " Lo, I am with you alway," 
and through this new organism goes forth to serve 
the world. " Where two or three are gathered in my 
name," is the promise, " there am I in the midst of 
them." Where they do not gather in his name, and 



SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION. 61 

do his work, his life dies out of them, if they ever had 
it. " For if a man abide not in me, he is a branch 
cut off, and he withers and dies." 

Such are the symptoms of what Jesus calls the 
spiritually dead ; and what is the resurrection out of 
this state, which He describes ? Answer : It is a new 
consciousness of life ; and its first token is a new con- 
sciousness of the truth of the soul. Spiritually dead 
men do not really know that they have souls. They 
really regard themselves as a more intelligent race of 
animals, who live and die only a more rational animal 
life and death. Yea, the scientists to-day are debating 
the question, whether any thing more is to be made 
of a man than that. The first boon which the gospel 
brings is an intense and vivid consciousness of the 
value of the soul, — a value so great that it flings dim- 
ness over all other values ; so that if a man gain the 
whole world, and lose the soul, he suffers an infinite 
loss. It is not merely the fact of immortality that 
gives this consciousness. No : the first operation of 
the Holy Spirit within you, will make you conscious 
of an untold capacity, both for suffering and joy, — a 
suffering and a joy compared with which the pains 
and pleasures of the body are contemptible indeed. 
Said a man once who had perverted, neglected, and 
abused his spiritual nature, and drowned the con- 
science out of it, but, waking up too late to a con- 
sciousness of its tremendous reality, "This body is all 



62 SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION. 

weakness and pain ; but my soul, as if stung by tor- 
ment to greater strength and spirit, is full powerful to 
reason, and full mighty to suffer; and that which tri- 
umphs within the jaws of immortality is doubtless im- 
mortal;" and as for a Deity, " Nothing less than an 
Almighty could inflict what I feel." And such is the 
twofold resurrection of all who are in the graves of 
spiritual death, who come forth at the voice of the 
Son of God. " They that have done good to the res- 
urrection of life, and they that have done evil to the 
resurrection of condemnation." The soul waked up 
to a vivid consciousness of its own power, neither 
enjoys nor suffers like an animal. There is an angel 
tone to its song of victory, and something more than 
mortal mingles in the voice of its wail. But another 
and decisive token of the resurrection from spiritual 
death is the Christ of consciousness, — in Paul's lan- 
guage, the Christ formed within, as the hope of glory. 
" I in them," says Jesus, " and thou in me, that they 
may be made perfect in one, and that the world may 
believe that thou didst send me." It is the faith in 
Christ, and the love of Christ, growing more full and 
abounding, till his spirit is your spirit, his life your 
life, his filial love and tenderness entering into you 
and giving you a heart of flesh beating warm and full, 
and throwing off the old spiritual death robes. It is 
both a new heart and a new mind. If you have this, 
you will love his service, and love his work, and love 



SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION. 63 

his church, and bring into it souls consecrated to 
Him ; for if any man be in Christ, he is a new crea- 
ture. " Old things have passed away. Behold all 
things have become new." Such is death, and such 
is resurrection, — the only death that is to be feared, 
and the resurrection to everlasting life. 

Bear with me in a word of exhortation and applica- 
tion of this subject. What avail these blessed Easter 
mornings if they find you in the graves of spiritual 
death ? Has the Christian gospel, which is " the 
word of the Son of man, " ever awakened you to a 
vivid consciousness of the real value of the souls that 
throb within you ? Do you know their untold capaci- 
ties for joy and for suffering ? Do you know the gran- 
deur and the tremendous possibilities of your own 
immortal natures ? If so, I wonder you do not seem 
to be more alive to the reality. Has Jesus Christ ever 
dawned upon you, not as a man who died in Palestine 
eighteen hundred years ago, and whom you have 
done with, but as the Risen and the Glorified, the 
God with us, the Head of his church, who calls to 
you out of the bending heavens, and calls you to a 
consecration to Him and his service ? Rise ! Oh, rise 
with Him out of these graves of religious indifference 
and insensibility ! Gather round Him as your living 
Head ; and then you will share in the glory of his 
resurrection ; for touched by Him, and made sharers 



64 SPIRITUAL RESURRECTION. 

of his spirit, his love, and his work, your souls within 
will become conscious of an inheritance and a joy, 
compared with which these earthly riches are as dross 
to the imperishable gold. 



CONVERSION. 



Acts XXVI. 19 : "I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision,"" 

THE conversion of Saul of Tarsus is one of the 
most prominent facts in the Christian history; 
and it belongs to that section of Christian history 
which has never been called in question. There are 
four Epistles of Saint Paul which the most searching 
and captious criticism accepts as genuine; and in 
these the conversion of Saul of Tarsus is described 
in all its graphic details. It was only about twenty 
years after the death and ascension of Christ ; and 
even if the Gospel histories had not come down to us, 
the experience and the work of Saint Paul fling back 
a light over the whole ground, and show its necessity 
as the basis of what follows. The sceptical criticism 
tries to account for Saul's conversion by the supposi- 
tion, that he had fits or swoons, and saw only the 
spectres of his own mind. If so, it is the first in- 
stance in which fits and swoons have resulted in 
such enlargement of intellectual power as to mould 
the thought of the world for eighteen centuries. 
But for other reasons the conversion of Saul of 



66 CONVERSION. 



Tarsus is a subject of exceeding interest. It illus- 
trates the nature of all conversion, and the power of 
Christianity in producing it. 

The city of Damascus is about six days' journey 
from Jerusalem. It stands on a green oasis amid a 
vast desert of sand, watered by crooning brooks, and 
embowered by delicious shade. Here was a syna- 
gogue of the Jews ; and some of its members had 
been converted to Christianity. Saul comes from 
Jerusalem, armed with letters from the Sanhedrim, 
to bring the apostates to punishment. There is 
something in his errand uncommonly cruel, even for 
a Jew ; for not only men, but helpless women, are to 
be dragged forth, and stoned to death. He is near 
the end of his journey; and Damascus, gleaming 
through its palm-trees, is already in sight. He is 
attended with a band of police-officers to help him in 
his work. The sun glares hot upon the sands; and 
you will see how much is meant when we are told 
that a brightness greater than the Syrian noon now 
surrounds these travellers, and overpowers them. 
You will notice the difference in the impressions' 
made on the senses of the travellers. We have three 
different narratives of the event, which seem at first 
to disagree in minor details, though the disagreement 
disappears on critical examination. They all witness 
a light so sudden and intense that it blots out the 
Syrian day. The blaze of a greater light involves 



CONVERSION. 67 



them. They cannot bear it, and fall upon their faces. 
They all hear a sound ; but only to Saul there is a 
form within the light, and words within the sound, — 
Hebrew words, in which his own name is articulated 
aloud, " Saul ! Saul ! why persecutest thou me ? It 
is hard for thee to kick against the goads. As vainly 
as the ox resists the sharp irons which drive him, so 
vainly do you resist my power that takes hold of you, 
and turns you. Go into the city, and it shall be told 
you what to do." 

He tries to go, but he is in midnight darkness. 
The rest see again, but to Saul the ^reen city is 
blotted out. He started from Jerusalem, the fierce 
spirit of the enterprise, breathing threatening and 
slaughter. He enters Damascus, where they lead 
him among the purling brooks, helpless as a child ; 
and he is lodged in charity at the house of one of 
those Christians he came to persecute. Such is what 
is generally known as the conversion of Saul of 
Tarsus ; but we have not ^et come to the conversion 
itself. We must not suppose, from the garb of 
marvel in which it comes down to us, that the con- 
version itself was exceptional or anomalous. No 
genuine conversion ever suspends the laws of the 
mind, else why was "this man selected from among 
others ? and why was not the whole Jewish nation 
converted in a mass to Christianity ? We lay off 
what is only special and adventitious ; and then we 



68 CONVERSION. 



shall see, in what remains, what all Christian conver- 
sion must be. 

i. The peculiarity in the case of Saul was the 
open vision of the Lord Jesus Christ. This, how- 
ever, was not necessary to his conversion to Chris- 
tianity, and had no necessary connection with it. It 
was because this man was to be, not only a Christian, 
but an apostle. To be an apostle, it was necessary 
that he should see the Lord. To be an apostle, the 
disciple must not only have seen his Lord in the 
flesh, but must see Him after his resurrection. For 
the apostles were to be witnesses of that fundamen- 
tal fact of Christianity. They were not only to 
preach Christ, but immortality brought to light, not 
through the reasonings of philosophy, but through 
the open demonstrations of the spirit-world. Hence 
the language of Christ, " I have appeared unto thee 
for this purpose, — to make thee a witness of those 
things which thou hast seen." And ever afterwards, 
when he speaks of his commission as an apostle, he 
appeals to the fact that he has seen the Lord Jesus. 
It is not logic, but testimony, and testimony to things 
revealed ; revealed not to our groping senses, but in a 
light so broad and intense as to eclipse the sun of 
noonday. The other apostles make the same appeal 
the ground of their mission. "This same Jesus," as 
said Peter amid the Pentecostal scene, "hath God 
raised up, whereof we are all witnesses? Paul proba- 



CONVERSION. 69 



bly had never seen Christ in the flesh : but he is now 
at Jerusalem, only twenty years after the death of 
Christ, when the blood of his martyrdom was still 
fresh upon Calvary, and all the events of his won- 
drous ministry were fresh upon the tongues of men ; 
so that the testimony and apostleship of this man 
alone, all other history aside, bring those great events 
before us, almost as the things of yesterday. 

2. We must look afterward to find the genuine 
conversion of Saul to Christianity. For three whole 
years after this remarkable vision he disappears from 
history. He appears neither at Jerusalem nor at 
Damascus, but retires into Arabia. What his experi- 
ence and employment there were he has not told us ; 
but we are not left in doubt from the nature of the 
case. There he gives his remarkable powers to the 
investigation of this new system of faith ; there 
all his Jewish learning comes into play ; there are 
searched the old prophecies which converge in lines 
of light to the day of fulfilment ; there the message 
of the risen Christ is pondered ; there Paul's large 
discourse of reason brings the new faith to the test 
of examination ; there new communings are had with 
the risen Christ ; and there the Holy Spirit comes, 
with its subduing and transforming power. 

There is in all genuine religious experience a 
secret province of the soul which cannot be laid open 
to the common gaze. The reticence of the apostle 



70 CONVERSION. 



respecting those three remarkable years, we can well 
understand. It is only when he comes out of this 
retirement, and re-appears at Jerusalem, that we find 
the wonderful change. He left it, a hard, persecut- 
ing bigot, breathing threatening and slaughter. He 
re-appears, with a heart brimming over with love for 
all mankind, and writes that chapter on charity, 
which has been its sweetest lyric to all times and 
ages. He was a man not to be overpowered by vis- 
ions, nor to surrender blindly his own reason and con- 
science, else he could not have been the masterly 
logician we find him afterwards. He pauses, rea- 
sons, examines, and prays. He takes three years for 
all this. And, out of this profound experience, he 
sets forth to others this same Christianity, with a 
self-devotion so entire, and a logic whose links are so 
warm with the Holy Ghost, that the theology of the 
Church has been largely run in its moulds. 

3. Lay off, then, the garb of miracle and prodigy, 
and we come to that experience of the apostle, which 
shows what all Christian conversion must be. It is 
meeting the Christ somewhere on the journey of life, 
in a light above the mere light of nature, demanding 
our obedience. It is the Divine Law laid supremely 
on the conscience, and enforced with the sanctions of 
immortality. It may not be on the hot desert of 
life: it comes sometimes with the first dawnings 
of infant reason, a sweetly-beaming star that grows 



CONVERSION. 71 



to the splendors of the Syrian noon. Those who are 
turned thus early to a Christian life do not date their 
conversion from one marked and decisive epoch. 
Even with them, however, the process is just the 
same. The decisive choice is made, and made so 
early, that the will is bent by gentle and easy tracta- 
tions to the Divine Will. The light from heaven may 
meet us later, for the first time, and on the sandy 
deserts of sin and unbelief. Then it becomes a land- 
mark in our history, standing out bold and palpable ; 
and all our after-life dates from it. But the nature of 
the change is ever the same. It is not a mere crisis 
of feeling and emotion : it is a change in the grand 
purpose of life. It is a choice to live no longer for 
ends that are narrow and selfish, but for ends that are 
broad, Christian, and humane. The heavenly vision 
breaks upon us, and the voice out of it is clear and 
commanding, and our response to it is strong and 
decisive, " Lord ! what wilt thou have me to do ? " 
It is the same law of Christ* coming not audibly, but 
not less surely, not out of the sky, but through the 
heart, with a stillness like the summer breeze. You 
hear it in calls and pleadings to a Christian life ; you 
hear it in the whole message of the gospel ; you hear 
it from the pages of his Word, where the Spirit of 
Christ breathes through the letter, and says, " Come 
unto me." The open vision vouchsafed to Paul, 
only revealed the agencies that ever work within us, 



72 CONVERSION. 



their voices breaking not upon the ear, but upon the 
reason and the conscience, because there they speak 
to our higher and nobler nature, and win us, not 
through the senses, but through the deepest convic- 
tions of the soul. Such is the nature of conversion 
as here revealed. Its results upon the life and char- 
acter are not less manifest. Old things pass away, 
and all things become new. The hardness, the hate, 
the cruelty, the evil passions, the Pharisaic pride and 
bigotry, which made up the Saul of Tarsus, and 
which are latent or manifest in every natural mind, — 
all these melt down and are purged away, as the 
Christ of consciousness becomes full and abounding. 
But we are not to imagine that all this takes place 
through some sacred magic, or some irresistible 
grace. If Paul required three years of prayer and 
self-discipline and self- application before he took up 
the message of the new life, let us not imagine that 
we are to be exempt from the same conditions. 
These conditions observed, the changes wrought in 
the character are ever the same to every Christian 
believer, — the Christ coming, not through the sky, 
but melting into the soul, our Life, our Light, our 
Righteousness ; transfusing those tender and humane 
sentiments that form the Christian atmosphere we 
breathe ; resting on our souls as a new and incum- 
bent Law; giving us an experience of the Divine 



CONVERSION. 73 



Love such as Jew or Pagan never had ; giving us the 
evidence of a Life working within our life ; giving us 
foretastes of heaven, and foresplendors of immortal- 
ity. 

Two points of special interest present themselves 
from this subject. One has respect to the dealings 
of God with his children. How tender is the Divine 
reserve ! He never comes to us so as to break us 
down into machines, but always has respect to the 
prerogatives of our spiritual nature. He comes not 
to overwhelm from without, but to inspire from 
within, through self-convictions made deep and clear. 
God is here, but veiled. Christ is here, but veiled. 
If they broke upon us with a light that blotted out 
the sun, we should need, all the same, our days and 
years of thought, of prayer, of self-examination, of 
clear reason in the interpretation of the outward 
phenomena to make sure that it was no imposition 
on our wildering senses. These outward phenomena 
alone convert no one. Otherwise they would be 
given. Otherwise not an unconverted Jew would 
have remained in Jerusalem, and not an unconverted 
man would be living to-day. 

But because of this Divine reserve in the manifes- 
tations from without, our listening to the voice within 
should be the more earnest and profound. For 
there come the revealings, which we disobey with 



74 CONVERSION. 



tenfold danger. Out of them comes the voice which 
speaks with a more commanding, because a more 
interior authority ; and happy is he who can say 
when it comes to him, " I was not disobedient to 
the heavenly vision." 






SELF-CONSECRATION. 



Mark X. 21 : " One thing thou lackest." 

HAVE you never observed that character may 
be perfectly blameless, without any spots or 
blemishes to which the most fastidious could point 
the finger, and yet you feel that it lacks the crowning 
grace of manhood and womanhood ? Do you not 
feel, even, that if put to the test, it would be found 
specious and illusive, and fail totally in the day of 
trial ? It is well worth our most careful analysis to 
ascertain how even Christian accomplishment and 
religious culture may be only an appearance, and 
not a reality, very sure to subside and come to 
nothing when God makes up his jewels. The narra- 
tive from which I take the text describes a young 
man, who, deeply impressed with the wonderful 
works of Jesus, and convinced, evidently, of his 
Divine mission, comes to Him with the expectation 
of being his follower, and sharing the reward of his 
kingdom. Let us for a moment bring out this young 
man's characteristics, and see what was the thing 
which he wanted, to give substance and vitality to 
the whole. 



J 6 SEL F- CONSE CRA TIOX. 

i. His morality is perfect: here he stands the 
test where most people would have found rents and 
stains upon their garments. There is no more 
perfect morality anywhere than that described in 
the two tables of the Decalogue. Its requirements 
are lofty and pure, in striking contrast, not only 
with the abominations of heathenism, but with the 
human codes of all ages. We can point back even 
now to these ten voices from Sinai, as evidence that 
Judaism had something in it which was not a human 
development, but a revelation out of heaven, — a 
sphere of Divine Light come down amid the dark- 
ness. Ail these the young man has kept from his 
youth up. 

2. Again : his religion is perfect so far as religion 
consists in observances and ceremonials ; for there 
never was any worship more complete and punctili- 
ous in all its forms than the Jewish. Its stated gifts 
and offerings were perfect representatives and sym- 
bols, Divinely appointed and arranged, involving all 
periods of life; from childhood up to age. These, also, 
the young man had observed from his youth up. 

3. Nor is this all. In personal graces and endow- 
ments he is also distinguished. They appear in his 
whole behavior, they bloom in all his manners. 
He comes to Jesus, and comes kneeling, with that 
graceful deference painfully lacking where the spirit 
of reverence has decayed. So sweet and lovable is 



SELF- CONSE CRA TION. 7 7 

his deportment, that the Saviour is touched by it, and 
pauses to look at the young man. " Beholding," 
says the narrative, " He loved him." In these three 
things — an untainted morality, conformity to a 
national religion Divinely instituted, and in personal 
gifts and graces — he is rich, and in need of nothing. 
What was lacking? Self-renunciation! That word 
describes the whole thing which was wanting, and 
which being absent, all those other acquirements 
were only on the surface, and lacked a vital element 
within. 

But what is this self-renunciation ? Let us enter 
into its meaning more fully. It lies at the very 
threshold of a true life, which without it has not yet 
begun to be Christian ; and I wish, in this sermon, 
to address more directly my young hearers, to whom 
I think the call to self-consecration comes with spe- 
cial earnestness. First we will see what is implied 
and involved in self-renunciation ; then what are the 
mistakes respecting it which we ought to avoid. 

1. Every person at some time, consciously or not, 
comes to a decisive choice between self and God. 
He comes into the free, conscious possession of the 
most precious gifts of mind and heart and soul and 
golden opportunity. He will use them in one of 
two ways. He will use them for objects mainly per- 
sonal, in which case his end will be supremely 
within himself; and self-seeking and self-indulgence 



7 S SELF-CONSE CRA TION. 

will be the chief aim of his life. Even his moralities, 
his worship, and his charities will have only self at 
the heart of them ; for they will be the decorations 
of his self-love, the gratifications of his vanity and 
pride. Or, on the other hand, these gifts of mind 
and heart and opportunity may all be held as God's, 
and not ours, — trusts committed to us, whereby to 
serve Him, and fill the sphere He has placed us in, 
with beneficence and blessing. When these gifts are 
consecrated to God's service, the Christian life has 
begun, and not till then : hence the sharp contrasts 
which the gospel presents to us, " He that is not with 
me is against me ; and he that gathereth not with me 
scattereth abroad." This describes in full the dis- 
tinction between Christ and the world, — being con- 
formed to the world, or being transformed by the 
renewing of our minds. We have been accustomed 
to dwell upon the intrinsic worth and capacities of a 
human soul ; and there is no exaggeration here, for 
it is out of such souls as are in you that God makes 
his highest angels. But the worth of the soul is 
only found when the soul is directed to right ends, 
and follows them with earnestness and singleness of 
purpose. If not so directed, and that early, you have 
only to look about you, and see how all its worth may 
be sacrificed and lost. Oh, the multitudes of men 
and women who began life with minds and hearts as 
fresh as yours, but whose souls dwindled and dried 



SELF- CONSE CRA TION. 7 9 

up until you would not know, except that they wear 
the human form, whether they were immortal beings 
or no ! You need not send your imagination on into 
the future state in order to understand what is meant 
by gaining the world, and losing the soul. To lose 
the soul, is to have its powers, once waking into life 
with all the dew of the morning upon them, nar- 
rowed down towards nothing, and shrunken and 
shrivelled up like a scroll, in the pursuit of narrow 
and ignoble ends. To save the soul, is to have its 
powers heaven-directed and baptized into some work 
of life paramount to all personal comfort and ease 
and pleasure ; to have them merged in the cause of 
Christ, which is the cause of human society and 
progress and regeneration. I have come to regard it 
as one of the beneficent arrangements of Divine 
Providence, that so many persons die young, and are 
thereby saved from that danger of collapse and dete- 
rioration which always attends unused or misdirected 
faculties here on the earth*. But this loss of the soul 
is not necessary ; and early self-consecration is the 
very thing that will save it. The difference between 
a consecrated and an unconsecrated life may not be 
obvious to you at the start ; but their lines diverge 
wider and wider asunder, till the space between 
measures all the difference between heaven and hell. 

The subsequent history of the young ruler has not 
been given to us; but we know just as well what it 



8o SELF-CONSECRATION. 

was, for we have seen it repeated again and again. 
Following him along into manhood and age, we should 
find him, in religion probably a Pharisee, whose inner 
life had oozed out upon the surface, and there hard- 
ened into a dry crust of conformity ; in morality, a 
Jew, clutching his great possessions more desperately, 
strictly observing his legal righteousness, without 
any throbs of humanity and mercy beating through 
it ; the bloom of youthful amiability gone, as belong- 
ing only to the surface of the man. Such manhood 
becomes when the soul is lost out of it, and only the 
semblance and the shell of it is left. 

An unconsecrated womanhood goes down on the 
same line of deterioration. Its spiritual life does 
not grow richer and deeper, but the want of moral 
aim is attended with total want of moral earnestness ; 
and a want of moral earnestness makes the charac- 
ter superficial and frivolous and worldly, and makes 
all accomplishments and acquirements mere devices 
to gain the admiration of society ; and when their 
day is past, the heart is left unsatisfied and desolate 
and cold. The gifts of mind and heart unused, or 
used only for private ends, always diminish, leaving 
only the semblance of humanity, without its divine 
inspirations and rewards. It is not so with a conse- 
crated life, which grows rich and full as its satisfac- 
tions increase. Then, for the first time, you know that 
God is with you, and that you are in the currents of 



SELF-CONSECRA TION. 



his Providence. Then, for the first time, prayer is 
really answered ; for we never pray with true faith, 
till we know we are working with God, and striving 
for the same ends that He has. Then your life is hid 
with Christ in God. Acting only within the circle 
of private aims and interests, you must always halt 
and calculate. You have always something to gain 
or lose, in ease, or comfort, or estate, or reputation ; 
and you never come into that clear and single-eyed 
activity that unlocks all the faculties, and gives them 
easy and healthful play, until you have given them 
to the Lord. Hence, so much talent that is never 
used. Hence, too, the fact, that, when one has passed 
through this stage of self-renunciation, he learns for 
the first time the angel powers that slumbered within 
him. Then the arm is nerved, and the heart is strong. 
Acting only in the eye of man, and calculating 
personal consequences, you hesitate, and take to 
ciphering to see how it will pay. Acting only in 
God's eye, and cast upon Him without any reserve, all 
artificial limitation and halting leave you in the 
liberty wherewith Christ has made you free. We 
never come into complete possession of ourselves till 
we have first renounced ourselves, and live alone for 
Christ, or the work which He gives us to do. Hence 
the prime purpose for which the Church of Christ 
exists here upon the earth. It is to draw into it, and 
organize and consecrate to his work, all human souls 



82 SELF-CONSECRATION. 

that will be acceptive of his grace and love, that in 
them and through them He may come in his kingdom, 
and make earth to blossom anew. But you will ask, 
perhaps, my young hearers, why not wait a while, and 
begin the Christian life by and by, when we shall 
have more need of its consolations, and understand 
more about it. Answer. For a great many reasons, 
but for one which is prominent and decisive ; and it 
is this. By waiting and delaying, you lose a golden 
opportunity that never will come round again. Only 
one period of youth is given to us ; and it is more 
decisive and plastic over our whole future being than 
any other period can possibly be. A life consecrated 
at the beginning secures to itself a whole treasury of 
impressions and affections warmed and sanctified by 
the Holy Spirit, which become more central and 
abiding than those of any other period of life. They 
go down deeper into our natures then, because our 
natures are more susceptible and tender to receive 
them and hold them than they ever will be again. 
Persons, it is true, sometimes become converted later 
in life ; but they are very apt to bring elements of 
character then which are flinty and earthly, and which 
even the fire of God's Spirit never melts out of them 
in this world, if it does in the world to come. It is 
to an early self-consecration, that our Saviour promises 
the guardian angels that always behold the face of 
the Father. 



SELF-CONSECRA TION. 83 

2. But do not mistake. When I say consecration 
to Christ, I mean the whole Christ, not anybody's 
poor human theories about Him. I mean the Christ 
of the New Testament, of his own Church Catholic, 
walking in the midst of the golden candlesticks, 
melting through the ages with greater and greater 
power and glory; not the Christ of some sect who 
have embalmed his dead body, and keep it laid away 
in the sepulchres of a past theology, calling that the 
Christ of to-day. 

The difference between joining the Church of 
Christ and joining a sect, is this. The church, truly 
Christian and Catholic, will gather you around Him 
with no priest between, in the full belief that no 
human creed can contain Him, that none of our little 
formularies exhaust Him ; but that your faith in Him 
is to grow larger and brighter as long as you live, 
and that your experience of his grace and love will 
grow more rich and tender to the last. The sect 
assumes that our first conception of Him shall be 
fixed and final ; nay, that we shall go back and take 
the interpretation of a dark age, five hundred years 
ago, and embrace its skeletons as the Christ of to-day. 
Do not come to Him in this way. Come to Him 
without any priestly mediation, and enter into the 
freedom of his truth and love ; and then you are con- 
secrated to a Christian life, whose flowing on shall 
be a continuous progress in time and eternity. 



84 SELF-CONSECRATION. 

Come to Him, then, that all your aims may be 
elevated, and made generous and pure. Come, that 
on the beatings of his heart your own love may be 
made larger and warmer and deeper. Come to Him 
as the perfect offering ; and as you pray, " O Lamb 
of God, my sacrifice," seek at his feet for a self- 
renunciation as complete as his. Come, that your 
faith in God whom He reveals may be always clear, 
and your faith in his children may be full of hope 
and confidence. Come, not to get into heaven, but 
that heaven may get into you, in its spirit of humility 
and never-failing charity. For, believe me, unless 
heaven first comes within, breathed through all the 
interiors of your minds, you shall find, when these 
bodies crumble about you, there is an awful gulf 
between heaven and you ; but, if here you are one 
with Jesus in heart and purpose and life, you will 
then be ready with the elders about the throne, not 
for barren praises, nor selfish delights, but for larger 
and more holy activities in the kingdom of universal 
love. And then you will look back to the early time 
when you heard and obeyed the call of the spirit 
within to give yourselves to Christ without reserve, 
as the hour when the heavens did bend around you 
with their selectest influence, and their angels watched 
you with a thrill of joy, that a new soul had been won 
to their abodes. 



SELF- CONSE CRA TION. 8 5 

" In childhood's spring, — ah, blessed spring ! 

As flowers closed up at even 
Unfold in morning's earliest beam, 

The heart unfolds to heaven. 
Ah, blessed child, that trustingly 

Adores and loves and fears, 
And to a Father's voice replies, 

' Speak, Lord : thy servant hears.' " 



CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL 
PROGRESS. 



Psalms LXXXI. io : " Open thy mouth, and I will fill it." 

THE figure of speech here used by the Psalmist, 
is that of a mother feeding her child. The 
sole condition on the part of the child is to receive 
what is given. Nothing great, nothing difficult, is 
required. No straining and reaching forth, but sim- 
ply opening the mouth to be fed, as a condition of 
health and growth, and becoming strong. And the 
figure is exceedingly suggestive as to the conditions 
of our spiritual progress, — conditions which I think 
we are very apt to make too complicated and hard. 

A distinction which Unitarians have been prone 
to overlook, or confound altogether, I propose, in 
this sermon, to bring out in as clear illustration as I 
can, and then apply it to the whole subject of spir- 
itual growth and progress. It is the distinction 
between the capacities, the receptivities, of human 
nature, and its inhering and independent force. By 
its capacities, we mean its susceptibilities to receive 
what is given, like the child's capacity to receive 



CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. 87 

food when hungry, or drink when thirsty, and thereby 
to thrive and grow. By its original force, we mean 
its intrinsic powers, self-contained and self-moving ; 
making progress, not so much by food received from 
without, or from above, as by springs of action within. 
By asserting and dwelling largely on these original 
powers and attributes, Dr. Channing unfolded his 
views of the dignity of human nature, — views which 
tone and color his whole argument in that excellent 
volume lately published, entitled " The Perfect Life." 
I do not wish, -by any means, to controvert the argu- 
ment. It needed at the time to be set forth strongly 
and clearly. But I do think, that, when we dwell too 
exclusively on the intrinsic force and dignity of 
human nature, we waft perfume to its pride, and 
for real spiritual life and progress we substitute our 
swollen conceit and vanity; yea, more, we make 
spiritual progress a mighty difficult and uphill busi- 
ness. It is working our way to heaven, and working 
hard. It is trying to warm ourselves only by fires 
of our own kindling. It is trying to move by self- 
development, which is very much as if a man should 
try to lift himself. How many people tried this pro- 
cess of spiritual culture till they got discouraged, and 
gave it up, and then went over to Rome, or over 
somewhere else, where there was nothing to do but 
just make believe, and be saved ! 

" Open thy mouth, and I will fill it." The capa- 



88 CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. 

city of the soul, its receptivity, in distinction from 
its power of self-moving, is the truth I want to bring 
out and apply. And how wonderful is this capacity 
of receiving and appropriating, — simply the faculty 
of opening the doors and windows of your souls 
for the Lord to come in. bringing: with Him the 
wealth and glory which He has, that He may make 
you sharers with Him ! Look at this truth in a three- 
fold application. 

I. The whole subject of prayer is invested with a 
living interest, based on the capacities of the soul, 
its receptivity of the Lord. No straining after prog- 
ress through painful self-culture, no baffled efforts 
to rise towards God out of yourself. Just keep still, 
and lay the hush of silence on all your turbulence, 
and open the door towards Him, and He comes ; not 
by noise, nor by voices, nor by visions, but by a 
growing peace and confidence and trust, worth more 
than they, and which, in times of suffering or times 
of sorrow, come sweetly as an even-song over tran- 
quil waters. You have never found, perhaps, this 
place of refuge ? Well, it is because you never 
sought it; or, if you did seek it, it was too exclu- 
sively through self-culture and self-development. It 
was because you shut yourself in, and never opened 
your mouth that He might fill it. The answer to 
prayer as it comes without, in giving rain, or in 
healing disease, or in suspending or adapting to us 



CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. 89 

the laws of the natural world, is a theme on which 
men raise subtle questions, or on which the scientists 
apply their prayer-gauge ; but all this touches not the 
heart of the matter. The answer to prayer comes 
primarily and vitally within ; and the only gauge we 
can apply to it is in the peace that passeth under- 
standing, and the soul laid at rest on the bosom of 
the Divine Love. It is not a painful flight towards 
God, but simply a reception of Him. It does not 
ask of you great . things nor difficult things : it asks 
you to keep still. It is not scaling some transcendent 
height: it is opening a door. Sometimes prayer is 
too deep, too earnest, and too still, for words ; and 
sometimes the Lord compels us to be still in order 
that He may get a hearing in us ; lays us on some 
bed of sickness, that He may stop our noise and get 
a hearing in us ; takes our earthly props away, that 
we may lean back upon Him; hushes dearly-loved 
voices in death, that his ^oice may become more 
distinctly audible ; by all methods of his Providence, 
seeking to make us know, not merely our power of 
doing, but our capacity for receiving, and use it 
till the doors and windows are all open for Him to 
enter in. And prayer the most effectual is not 
where there is shouting, and importunity, and end- 
less repetition, as if trying to storm the throne of 
God, and bring Him down, which some people mis- 
take for earnestness. It is where all our noise and 



9<j CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. 

outcries have sunk into calm; and then, when our 
minds and hearts all open towards Him in our stillest 
and most listening moods, He comes on like the 
dawn of the morning, till his light has flushed our 
whole sky with its colors, and sent into our hearts 
its exceeding and abiding peace. It is not any 
self-chafings, nor any storming of the heights: it is 
simply an opening and a reception ; but, in order to 
this, be sure you put the finger of silence on all your 
selfish passions and outcries. " Be still," He says, 
" and know that I am God." 

2. Apply the subject, again, to the Divine Revela- 
tions. There are two views on this subject, — one 
based on the intrinsic native ability of human nature, 
the other based on its faculty of reception. By look- 
ing exclusively on man's native abilities, we come to 
believe that human nature develops upward into 
Christ's, and produces Bibles from within ; and that 
these are the production of its original and intrinsic 
powers. Revelation is, according to this view, our 
own human discovery, as we scale the heights of 
heaven, and survey the prospect. But the view of 
man as a recipient shows, that, while man's original 
power of discovering Divine Truth is very small, his 
faculty of recognition and reception of truth when 
given to him is very great. 

And here let me give you an historical fact. One 
fact sometimes is worth more than a dozen theories. 



CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. 91 

The fact is this. In all the history of the race, no 
instance has ever been known of a nation really 
savage rising of itself into the light of civilization, or 
reaching the higher truths through self-development. 
Nations sink from civilization into barbarism : they 
never rise by their native impulsions and abilities out 
of barbarism into Divine Light. One such case clearly 
pronounced is yet to be found. On the other hand, 
carry the Divine Revelation to these people, and see 
their faculty of reception. The Sandwich Islander, 
from immemorial time, lived in dread of the demon 
who inhabited the neighboring volcano. The mis- 
sionary brought to him a revelation of God, and of 
his Christ. The demon went out as the Christ came 
in ; and the infernal shadow passed off from the 
fields, and from the mind of the native, which woke 
to the consciousness of a new spiritual life. How 
long, think you, before he would have reached this 
result by trying to lift himself into the light ? The 
Saxon race, to which we all of us belong, have no 
difficulty in electing between the worship of Odin 
and the worship of the God and Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, whose word came to them from Palestine, 
and found them. But if it had not found them, you 
and I to-day, instead of being gathered here for wor- 
ship, might be quaffing from human skulls libations 
to the war-god of the north, or we might be, by blood 
and rapine, earning our heaven in the halls of Val- 



92 CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. 

halla. Such is the difference between our original 
powers of self-development and discovery, and our 
capacity of reception and appropriation of Divine 
Truth ; between our reason groping its private and 
solitary way, and our reason penetrated and folded in 
the Divine Splendors. 

The religion of humanity, as the resultant of its 
own efforts at discovery, has always been either blank 
atheism or blind superstition. The religion of hu- 
manity, as the resultant of Divine Reason and the 
human, one acting upon the other and within it, is a 
sublime faith that regenerates and saves. Neither 
you nor I would ever have discovered the future life ; 
and our private reason groping after it would have 
flapped its wings among chimeras as dark and vain, 
probably, as those which the savages chased after. 
And yet that life may be so unveiled to us that the 
blazon shall be its own irresistible evidence ; for it 
lifts up the reason when it comes in the transfigura- 
tions of its own glory, shows us this life and the 
other, which before lay dark, dead, and fragmentary, 
brought into symmetry and order and organic unity, 
— a unity quite undiscoverable by the faculties of the 
mind, but recognizable when presented to the open 
gaze. 

While, therefore, our power of original discovery is 
very small, our faculty of recognizing the truth when 
it comes, and knowing it when presented, is our most 



CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. 93 

auspicious endowment. It is opening the mouth to 
be filled with bread from heaven. It is the soul 
finding its own through the tender Divine adaptations 
to its profoundest needs. As light to the eye, as 
music to the ear, as food and drink to him who 
hungers and thirsts, so, to the reason and to the 
heart, is truth when unveiled in its benignity and 
comprehension. What I know of God, and of his will, 
and of my own destiny, yea, of this very world I live 
in, by merely diving into myself, or looking through 
my narrow horizon, would be extremely meagre. 
What I know, as given to me in the Christ, extends 
the horizon beyond the grave, and beyond the stars, 
and lets in the sunlight on my private imaginations, 
ventilating the little house I live. in with the airs of 
Paradise. 

3. Apply this subject in yet another direction. 
The virtues and the graces of the Christian life, 
the beautiful flowering and fruitage of Christian be- 
lieving, are one thing as coming from your receptiv- 
ity of the Lord, quite another matter as the fruits 
of mere self-culture and self-development. Humility 
is one of the prime Christian graces ; and it has small 
chance of cultivation till we acknowledge ourselves 
recipients of the Lord, till we seek to find Him, by 
letting Him come to us rather than by building our 
Babels up towards Him, and trying to scale his 
heavens thereby. Humility is not humiliation nor 



94 CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. 

self-disparagement. It is simply rendering to the 
Lord what belongs to Him, instead of claiming it as 
our own. We are the most humble when we think 
least of ourselves, or put ourselves out of the account 
altogether, and let the Lord shine through us with 
his un colored sunlight, without staining it with our 
own miserable selfhood. As recipients of Him, we 
own nothing, and therefore have nothing to be proud 
of. For the gifts and graces of Christian character 
in which He clothes us, if He clothes us at all, are 
the radiations of his own life in us ; and these are 
brightest and most heavenly when we are least con- 
scious thereof. As to that life which comes to us by 
prayer, as to that light of Divine Revelation which 
folds our reason in a higher wisdom, there is no room 
for comparison of one man with another, and the 
strut of our vanities looks hideous indeed. 

" We are all beggars : poor and bare 
We stand before thy face, 
Save when in borrowed robes we flare, 
Or shinings of thy grace." 

" Open thy mouth, and I will fill it." The sermon 
would be but poor preaching if it failed to urge its 
lesson upon those of you who keep yourselves shut 
in till you shut God and his revelations clean out. I 
have thought, sometimes, that Unitarians needed a 
new Channing, to set forth the receptive capacities 



CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL TR OGRESS. 95 

of the human soul over against its inherent dignity 
and power; since its dignity and power only come by 
its opening to the Lord and his Word, as the buds of 
spring-time open to the sun and the rain, and thence 
take on all their greenness and glory. I do think 
there is less earnest and systematic study of the 
Bible among us than among any other class of Chris- 
tian believers. What vast resources has the Chris- 
tian Sabbath which we have never yet used ! One 
sermon a week, which must be sensational in order 
to be interesting, — in other words, very discursive 
and very shallow, — affords small means for any 
adequate knowledge of the Divine contents of Reve- 
lation. The Bible-class, grouping not the children 
only, but the congregation, with the aids of modern 
science for the new interpretation, might put us in 
the way of some more adequate and progressive 
knowledge of the Divine Word, and would show us 
I am persuaded, what truths had waited within its 
covers for our reception. What progress has been 
made during the last twenty-five years in religious 
knowledge, especially on the subject of the future life 
and its relations to this life, clearing away the gloom 
of death, and the darkness of the grave ! It is not 
that any new revelation has been made, but that the 
old Bible was full of revelations which people slept 
over, and would not see. And still it speaks to the 
condition of our toiling humanity ; and while science 



96 CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. 

is doing its best, and remains dumb touching the 
great problems of eternal life, the invitation is, 
" Open thy mouth, and I will fill it." And the call to 
prayer is not a call to exercise some rare gift of volu- 
bility, but a call rather to suppress it, and listen at 
the open door. " Behold, I stand at the door, and 
knock. If any man hear my voice, and open the 
door, I will come in, and sup with him, and he shall 
sup with me." 



SUCCESS. 



John XIX. 30 : " It is finished " 

I DO not understand these words to mean merely, 
as some expositors would make them, " Life is now 
at an end: death has come." The Saviour means, 
" This gives completeness to my work and mission 
here on the earth." How constantly He sets forth 
the fact that He was not to die till his hour had 
come ! And even when the clangers and the plottings 
grew thick around Him, there was always a way of 
escape through them, until the work He came to do 
had been accomplished. Not only his death, but the 
time and method of it, He takes up into his plan, and 
organizes as one of the factors in working out the 
grand results of his mission. Once his enemies have 
Him apparently in their power ; but He glides out of 
their hands, because " his hour had not yet come." 
And, when the time had arrived, how triumphant is 
his language ! " Father, the hour is come. Glorify 
thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify Thee." At 
the beginning, he forecasts his work, and maps out 
the plan of it. His ministry fills it out, and rounds it 



9S SUCCESS. 



into completeness. And so the last words on the 
cross, " It is finished," announce the consummation 
on earth of a life which has passed through all its 
stages, and has been rounded out to its full period. 
" It is finished." That is not a despondent, but an 
exultant annunciation ; as if He had said, " Now this 
life, as to its earthly course, sounds the key-note of 
its consummation and triumph." 

We are prone, I think, to let our faith run into 
belief in special providences, as if God had a special 
plan for some to work in, and held them to it, while 
others were outside of it. Rather, we should believe 
that the great and illustrious ones, and especially the 
Christ, are the very ones who bring the laws of the 
Divine Providence into most shining manifestation, — 
those same laws that infold you and me ; and that 
of every one who lives a Christian life, and does its 
work, those same words, " It is finished," can be 
spoken only as sounding the key-note of its con- 
summation and triumph. Hence, you find that those 
men who have felt themselves called to a special 
work have had a kind of intuitive consciousness that 
they were leading a charmed life, that they were 
believers in predestination ; as Murray said when his 
enemies assailed him, " I am immortal on the earth, 
so long as God has work for me ; and when He has 
not, I no longer wish to live." 

But here a subject of vast and vital interest opens 



SUCCESS. 99 

before us. What is a life that is finished ? What 
do we mean, or what should we mean, by those 
words, " success in life " ? No words are more com- 
mon on the lips of men, in those questionings which 
arise about the prosperity of each other, than these : 
" How has the man succeeded ? " And prayer for that 
success is the first which the parent sends up to the 
throne when his children go forth amid the conflicts 
and the bufferings of this world. And our feelings 
of commiseration are never so full as when, musing 
over the end of life, we cannot say, " It is finished ; " 
but, " It is a failure." He has not overcome the 
world, but the world has overcome him ; and there 
he lies. 

But what is a finished life ? Finished in the Chris- 
tian sense, copied down from that great master-life of 
all, so that there is neither excrescence nor deficiency ; 
but, like the statue which the sculptor clips and 
finishes, it is handed over without deformity to its 
place. 

Now, there are two classes of persons, two orders 
of lives, which have their beginnings in this world. 
There are those which have no probation here, which 
are taken out of this world before the period of moral 
choosing, and whose probation falls on the other side, 
— infancy and childhood removed to that other sphere, 
like flowers transplanted to a warmer and more genial 
clime because the winds in this were too cold and 



ioo SUCCESS. 



bleak for them. These are without moral probation 
here. But all the others — and, upon the whole, the 
more favored ones — enter upon a period of moral 
choice ; and of these it must be said by all who believe 
in a Providence, that, the choice being rightly made, 
there is no possibility of an untimely end. 

This question of a finished life has two answers, — 
a negative and a positive one. 

Its completeness, let us observe in the first 
place, does not depend upon its duration. There 
may be a beautiful completeness in one's life, even 
when its sun goes down before noon ; because it may 
course its way under suns that come down from a 
higher sky. The man, we may suppose, had his 
object : he lived for it, and he accomplished it ; and 
what more could he have done in this respect, if he 
had lived a thousand years ? The greatest life ever 
lived on earth was only thirty years in length. Others 
may go on to fourscore and fivescore years, and leave 
not a trace behind them. Time with God is nothing, 
as we measure time ; for He measures life only by 
the events and stages that make up its transitions 
and periods, not by months and years. 

Again : success is not that sort of independence 
which some people dream of, when they will be free 
from the anxieties of want, of misfortune, and of tem- 
poral change. Some such goal as this often presents 
itself to the golden visions of those who are entering 



SUCCESS. 101 

on the work of life. That> end of pecuniary inde- 
pendence attained, it may be an aid to success, or 
it may end as most wretched failure; for do you not 
observe that people who are over anxious to obtain 
a competence form a habit of anxiety, and are just 
as anxious about keeping it after they have got it, 
and just as anxious lest some breath should blow it 
all away ? Nor yet, again, is it worldly position, about 
which there is so much strut and strife under the 
disguise of conceit and vanity. Position in the world 
comes under the arrangements of God, whose laws 
and conditions we have not the making of; comes 
when posts of duty are to be filled, and draw to them 
the men or women who will fill them well. All other 
positions have only pasteboard and filigree under 
them ; and even the world sees this, and shakes them 
down with its laughter. 

i. But to advance from the negative to the positive 
side of my subject, we observe, with the great exam- 
ple before us, that every life that ends complete must 
begin with a Divine mission and purpose. I mean 
by Divine mission, that its work must be chosen 
under the recognition of a Providential guidance. 
Always there is a baptism and a consecration to 
some work distinctly placed in view and held there. 
There is a baptism by the Jordan, and a voice from 
heaven urgent upon the soul, before our probationary 
life has a beginning, to say nothing of its middle and 



102 SUCCESS. 



its end. I have heard of preachers who had a " call." 
But there is a special call to every individual, into 
some work best adapted to the faculties which 
God has given him, and the opportunities which 
God has thrown in his way. But, oh, the men and 
women that float upon the stream of time, and 
tend no-whither, solely for want of this self-direction 
and consecration ! The reason that is generally 
given for living without an aim is, that there is no 
work to do. Every calling is crowded and full ; and 
some persons are crowded out. The plea always and 
everywhere of our indolence and pride ! There is 
always plenty of work in this world, and more than 
enough, for all the people who live in it ; but some of 
the work is humble, — brings no honor nor applause, 
albeit there is no work in all the myriad functions 
ordained by God which is not sweet and beneficent. 
But those that aim at nothing, always do nothing, 
or else they roam from one thing to another ; and 
they never begin life with the sublime baptism, the 
voice of whose clearly defined purpose so wakes up 
the faculties, that it rings through the conscious- 
ness like the voice that came down on the baptismal 
waves, "This is my beloved Son." 

Here, again, the example of Christ illumines the 
way of all who follow Him. He is the Messiah, the 
Sent, the Anointed ; so called, because the one 
great work was given Him to do, and he w T as born 



SUCCESS. 103 

into it and prepared for it ; anointed, sent, came 
even for this cause into the world. It burned in his 
consciousness clearer and clearer, till it came as a 
voice from heaven. Down in his own humble sphere, 
and doing the business of life, — that business being 
consecrated to a Divine end, — every follower of 
Christ may see his own work copied down on a lower 
plane from this Divine example ; and then all his 
work will be holy. 

2. After a mission and a purpose, comes a second 
condition, if life is to be finished or rounded to its 
close, — a religious faith that will enlighten that pur- 
pose and inspire it, and keep it clear and strong. A 
man must not only aim at something, but he must 
have such light and guidance that he can hit the 
mark. He must not work blindly, nor in the dark. 
No man's life is successful until he has obtained clear 
and settled relisrious convictions which illustrate its 
meaning. He has not succeeded until he has grap- 
pled with that problem which meets him at every 
turn, and which demands a solution of the mystery 
of existence. I do not mean that a man's creed must 
all be settled, but he must stand on some funda- 
mental truth which reveals to him the purpose of all 
our struggles and labors. A man without a religion 
that solves this problem, is one whose mind is afloat, 
and who has nothing to guide him through the world's 
commotions and revolutions. He has no true success 



104 SUCCESS. 



until he is grounded on those everlasting principles 
which partake not of the vicissitudes of earthly 
things. Until this be done, he can have no sense of 
personal security and no unfailing peace. Indeed, a 
man has never become successful until his essential 
happiness is placed beyond the reach of all outward 
fluctuation and change. This can never be done 
until he has settled with himself what is the true 
end of life ; until, in short, he has embraced a religion 
on whose solid foundations he feels secure. He may 
be ever so successful in the competitions of business, 
and life still remain to him an enigma ; and mystery 
may hang like a dark spirit over all his prospects. 
What is the end of all this ? why are all these strug- 
gles and endeavors ? are the questions which must 
haunt him and press upon him in thoughtful hours. 
Faith, — faith that penetrates the future, and brings 
down from heaven a bright and blessed philosophy 
which flings its illuminations over the present scene, 
and reveals the grand object of all existence, — is 
essential to true success and victory. It need not be 
an obtrusive or a difficult faith: its first truths may 
be as simple as the lessons of a child ; but without 
it there is deceitfulness and hollowness in all pros- 
perity, which then determines to no sublime ends and 
issues, therefore has no moral unity. 

In the whole history of the world, I do not know 
of any period over which there broods so thick a 



SUCCESS. 105 



darkness, as that which just preceded the coming of 
Christ, when the old religions had failed, and the 
new religion had not yet dawned. Men of thought 
groped about, and wondered what they lived for. If 
for time only, why these yearnings irrepressible, and 
why these frightful disorders and sufferings ? If 
there is a God, said they, beyond that sky over our 
heads, why does He not make a rent through it, and 
tell us for what He made us ? Well, God spake 
through that brazen sky, and the message came ; and 
look a few years later, and you see those commun- 
ions called Christian churches, dotting the darkness ; 
just as sometimes, when travelling at night, you come 
in sight of a town that looms up in the distance, and 
flings its streamlets of light from a thousand win- 
dows into the darkness. So Christianity came, re- 
vealing a sublime purpose in human existence, and 
making every man a missionary to his time, for heal- 
ing its miseries, and rolling^the darkness away. 

3. I remark, in the third place, and lastly, this life 
has its completeness when it has prepared us for 
that higher and better life whose scenes are in pros- 
pect. It is complete, that is, when a man has become 
fit to render it up. This world, in connection with a 
higher one, is a school of discipline which has certain 
lessons to be learned, and certain acquisitions to be 
made, that we may be prepared for the untasked 
industries of heaven. In this vast and comprehen- 



io6 SUCCESS. 



sive economy of Divine Providence, how beautiful 
and orderly would seem all its operations could we 
see the whole ! — one sphere rising above another, far 
away towards the central light and glory, each in the 
lower sphere preparing for the one which is next 
above him, while the Creator sees all below rising 
in unbroken gradations toward Himself. Now, there 
is a time when the soul here on earth is matured for 
its immortality ; and, when that time comes, death is 
a most auspicious event, for it comes with the angelic 
annunciation, " It is finished. " And yet, when men 
talk about preparation for death, how liable they are 
to fall into the cant of sect, or into dark and wilder- 
ing superstitions ! Pious words, mysterious rites, 
sacred magic of some kind, are substituted for that 
Christian preparation which gives to life a Divine 
completeness. 

This preparation for a higher life which makes us 
fit to render up the earthly life, and which makes our 
probation successful, is exceedingly well defined. It 
is described as " overcoming the world," " obtaining 
the victory." In other words, it is when, in that 
struggle which is going on with every man, between 
the higher and the lower nature, the former has pre- 
vailed, and its principles have been finally estab- 
lished. It is not moral perfection, it is not vicarious 
righteousness, nor magical faith. It is, in one word, 
" victory," " overcoming." Plainly, overcoming the 



SUCCESS. 107 

world is bringing into subjection those dispositions 
and passions which the world excites, and to which 
its corruptions make their appeal. Instead of ruling, 
they serve. Instead of their overcoming us, we have 
overcome them, and held them to their place. It is 
when the awful power of moral choice has been put 
forth, and you have taken for your rule of life the 
Divine Law, and not the irresponsible and selfish will. 
How anxiously must the guardian heavens watch in 
us that moment of decisive choice, when it comes 
down clear, decisive, and final, and there is no longer 
any trembling of the balance ! If you have never 
made this choice, you can make it now, this morning, 
if you will, with all consecrating vows and prayers. 
And then there is joy in heaven ; and if ever they 
ring the bells there, it is when a soul is thus gained 
for its abodes. Because heaven is passing into our 
minds, not with great noise and commotion, but with 
broader, clearer, deeper demonstrations of its power 
and influence, and opposing principles grow feeble, 
and their murmurs become still. Or else the world is 
encroaching upon our whole natures, and the higher 
and heavenly is suffering eclipse and extinguishment 
under the encroaching shade. It is when the balance 
has ceased to tremble, and to render the issue doubt- 
ful ; when God, not self, has become supreme and 
regnant within, — that man is said to overcome the 
world. And this is victory ; and it was the victory, 



SUCCESS. 



not over death, but over sin, which called out that 
burst of gratitude from the apostle, " Thanks be to 
God that giveth us the victory through our Lord 
Jesus Christ." And you see this does not depend 
upon length of years. You who have become old 
enough to make a clear choice between Christ and 
the world, that is, to have a probation, can have this 
victory now, this very day, if you have not already 
obtained it. 

The business of life well chosen, a religious faith 
that inspires it and keeps it to unselfish ends, the 
world overcome and under our feet, these three 
things make up a Christian life that is finished, — 
finished, I mean, in the sense that life is a heavenly 
success. And now let me run out and make good 
another comparison between the life of the Divine 
Master and the life of all his followers. It is one 
which the Christian believer cannot meditate without 
a thrill of triumph and rejoicing. We have seen 
how, through all the snares of his enemies, Jesus 
walked secure and serene until he could say, " The 
hour is come." Till then they had no power over 
Him. There was no special Providence in his case ; 
for no Providences are special. Only in Him as the 
Divine Humanity, the great laws of Providence, as 
they apply to all humanity, blaze forth and become 
manifest. So it- is with every life consecrated to 
Him, and going on to be finished. It will not, can 



SUCCESS. 109 



not stop an hour too soon or an hour too late. Of 
its day and of its hour no man knoweth. But do 
not suppose that God knoweth not its hour, nor that 
that thing of Divine workmanship — a Christian life — 
better than all the finishings of human art, will fail 
for want of time. Concealed in the Divine protec- 
tion, it flows on till its end is gained ; for God never 
leaves his work half done. Choose your work with 
vows of consecration, do it in the light of a clear 
faith, and your hour comes not till God, if not man, 
can write over your grave, "It is finished." Fin- 
ished, it may be, like the Master's, in the midst of 
manly vigor and bloom; finished, nevertheless, as that 
Divine workmanship which God has moulded consum- 
mately for the skies. And this it is which gives to 
the Christian that sense of Divine shelter in storms 
and in calms which enables him to tread with even 
pace along all the pathways of this world. 

John Wesley, six days % before his death, wrote a 
letter to Wilberforce, the last words of his pen. " I 
know," he says, in substance, to the philanthropist, 
" that you must have been raised up for your work 
and protected in it by God, else you would long 
ago have been overcome by the men and devils who 
oppose you." It was the same Providence that guards 
the lives of its own, until their lives are all complete. 
I do believe that many a life has come to its end here 
sooner than it should, because it had no moral pur- 



no SUCCESS. 

pose ; because there was help needed, and work to do, 
which ought to have drawn out and absorbed the 
energies which otherwise flowed inward to breed 
morbid conditions and death to the body and the 
soul. And so the Lord sponged it out of the world 
as of no use in the world. And many others have 
been kept here solely by means of a moral purpose. 
The vow had been made, " I see a good here I want 
to work out, and feel called to-do;" and the Lord 
answered, " Take your time for it. Go and do it, 
and then come up higher." 

My hearers, are you living for any thing ? Have 
you begun life with any moral object and end ? Have 
you that faith which will give you guidance, and be a 
light to go before you as a pillar of flame ? Or, are 
you living without any faith, without any religion, 
following your calling mechanically, only that you 
may eat, drink, and sleep ? Without some faith to 
give me a theory of life, as well as its hard and dusty 
realities, I should feel, as it seems to me, for every 
grave I saw opened, for every pang that is felt, for 
every family that passes away, as if I were placed in 
a world where all is disorder and illusion, — 

" To know delight but by her parting smile, 
To toil, and wish, and weep, a little while." 

Do not deem life successful till the promise is 



SUCCESS. ill 



fairly yours, " He that overcometh, the same shall 
be clothed in white raiment ; and I will not blot out 
his name out of the book of life, but I will confess 
his name before my Father, and before his angels." 



THE THREE ADVENTS. 



Matthew XXV. 13 : " Watch ! for ye know neither the day nor the hour 
wherein the Son of man cometh." 

THE discourse of our Saviour which comprises 
the twenty- fourth and twenty- fifth chapters of 
Matthew's Gospel, is the longest that we have 
reported, and most remarkable for its solemn gran- 
deur. To fully enter into its meaning, we must 
stand with the Saviour on the summit of Mount 
Olivet, just east of the city, overlooking its buildings 
and its busy population. It is eventide. The most 
conspicuous object is the temple on Mount Moriah. 
Its gilded roof and white marble columns would be 
furbished in the rays of the setting sun. " Ye ad- 
mire all these things," said Jesus; "but I say unto 
you, the building shall be razed to its foundations." 
The disciples are eager to know when this shall be. 
It shall be at the second coming of the Son of man ; 
and they ask what are to be the signs of that com- 
ing. Then begins the discourse which ends with the 
twenty-fifth chadter. Jesus rises into the highest 
realm of prophetic vision, and paints with divine 



THE THREE ADVENTS. 



pencil the events which foretoken his coming, that 
coming itself, and its consummation. The commen- 
tators, in attempting to analyze this high utterance, 
find themselves baffled and confused. One view 
confines the whole prophecy to temporal events, — 
the destruction of Jerusalem, and the dispersion of 
the Jews. Another view goes farther. The second 
coming was the spread of his religion in the world. 
Another goes farther yet. The second coming is 
to wind up human affairs. It is a coming to judg- 
ment, and to determine the destiny of the race. 
Take either view, and apply it exclusively, and you 
will see how it halts and fails. Neither one satis- 
fies all the language and the imagery. Put them 
all together and they do no more than that. Remem- 
ber, that from our Saviour's point of view, rapt into 
the vast future, time ceases to be. Scenes of this 
world and of the other rise in the perspective, — one 
in the foreground ; the other, dissolving views of the 
same picture. Scenes of time and eternity shade 
one into the other ; and as all to Him was a present 
reality, He does not mark the transitions by dates 
and years. 

There is, however, one dominant idea which tones 
and gives unity to the whole. It is the coming of 
the Son of man. It is the Divine Advent in Christ. 
Here, indeed, is the one great truth to which all the 
leading facts of the Bible history have reference. 



114 THE THREE ADVENTS. 

Indeed, it is the one truth which unitizes all the his- 
tory of the world. And what is meant by the com- 
ing of the Son of man ? Simply God imparting 
Himself to humanity. Simply the Divine Mind yield- 
ing itself to the human mind, in order to cleanse the 
human, inspire it, and lift it up into the Divine Em- 
brace. But in the accomplishment of this Divine 
plan there are degrees and stages through which it 
moves on to its fulfilment. 

The coming of Christ is threefold. 

His coming in the flesh. 

His coming in the soul. 

His coming in the judgment, according as He is 
received or rejected. 

His coming in the flesh, we say, for it was neces- 
sary that the Divine Word, as the embodiment of the 
Divine Nature itself, should be made flesh, and 
appear before the eyes of men, that they might see 
it living, acting, moving in a human form, and going 
forth into a perfect human practice. It was neces- 
sary, I say, in order to any adequate disclosure of the 
Divine Nature to men. And why ? Because words 
alone cannot reveal God. They may tell us about 
God, and about his power and majesty, but his intrin- 
sic nature they cannot disclose. We call God our 
Father, but that word reveals no Divine Fatherhood, 
unless our human relations have been purged of self, 
and thrill with the Divine Love. Till then those rela- 



THE THREE ADVENTS. 



tions are shaped only by the instinct of the natural 
man. The Jews called Him Father, but that described 
Him only after their notions of fatherhood ; and they 
were a people who punished their own children with 
death, and who killed their prisoners of war, even 
the women and the little ones. What does father- 
hood signify among a people whose human relations 
all have the taint of selfishness ? They called Him 
merciful ; but what does mercy mean among people 
whose mercies are cruel ? They called Him good ; 
that meant kind to family and friends, and to 
nobody beyond. They called Him just; their justice 
required eye for eye, and tooth for tooth, and per- 
sonal retaliation, which had in it the deadly taint of 
hatred and revenge. Words alone cannot reveal 
God, simply because all human speech has its roots 
in human experiences and passions, and therefore has 
the taint of our human imperfection and depravity. 
The missionary goes anTOng savage nations. He 
tries to translate the Divine Law into the savage dia- 
lects, and finds they have not scope of meaning 
enough to take it in. The Christian ideas of forgive- 
ness, love, mercy, compassion, have no equivalent 
where there has been no corresponding experience ; 
and so they float in the air without any roots to be 
engrafted on, and to give them a resting place. Pile 
up the words as you may, and string out the adjec- 
tives to any length you please, in descriptions of the 



u6 THE THREE ADVENTS. 

Divine attributes, you cannot make them redolent of 
the Divine charms and glories, because the words 
can reach no height above the human nature in 
which they have their root, and out of which they 
draw up all their meaning and inspiration. There- 
fore, language alone, gathered from all the dialects of 
the earth, could not yield to human thought the 
immaculate conception of the Godhead. 

No. Nor could any angel from heaven do it. An 
angel might have descended, and proclaimed the 
gospel from the tops of the mountains, and the beau- 
tiful vision would have floated in air ; but how 
could it get down to the earth as a fixed and historic 
reality ? What language could the angel have spoken, 
that the earth would understand ? What words in 
which to translate his ideas, and give them complete 
body and clothing, could he have found in our dialects 
down here in the flesh and in the dark ? His gospel 
message would have floated over us as a strain of 



music, and then died away ; hovering above the earth 
like a song, but having no such articulation and form 
as to give it an abiding-place among our gross and 
palpable realities. Words again, angelic words ; but 
words untranslatable into our human speech, because 
they have no roots in our human experience and 
history. Indeed, angels did come in this way, all 
along the ages, and through all the Old Testament 
history, giving men dreams of a better state, ,and 



THE THREE ADVENTS. 117 

prophecies of a more glorious future. And the 
dreams and the prophecies sank down straightway 
into carnal conceptions of a temporal Messiah. 
Never were these conceptions dissipated, and our 
human thought lifted up to the Divine Idea, until, at 
last, the angel song floated over Bethlehem, and the 
star stood still over the heavenly babe lying in a 
manger. And then the Word was indeed made flesh. 
Not a humanity corrupt and sinful, and which had 
tainted the very language of human intercourse, but 
a humanity without any spot on its disk, became the 
resplendent image of the Divinity. The Divine Word 
was made flesh. He not only spake, but He assumed 
human relations, wants, sufferings, temptations, affec- 
tions, and joys; wrapped the garment of our infancy 
about Him, as well as that of our childhood and 
manhood ; put on our mortality, and put it off again, 
in order to show death as the inverse side of resur- 
rection and eternal life. -All those goodly words 
whereby we describe the Divine attributes, — justice, 
mercy, forgiveness, and love, — He has filled out with 
new meaning, lifting up our low and sensuous vocabu- 
laries into the Divine Light, and breathing the Divine 
Life into them. They have the taint of our selfish- 
ness taken clean out of them ; and humanity, in Christ 
made perfect and Divine, becomes the complete rep- 
resentation and transparency of the Godhead. And 
so the historic Christ, standing in the midst of the 



n8 THE THREE ADVENTS. 

ages, is a twofold revelation. He is the revelation 
alike of perfect Divinity and perfect humanity ; for 
one is the image of the other, copied down to us out 
of heaven. He shows us the God we ought to wor- 
ship, and brings Him nigh, in order that his attributes, 
though in finite degree, may be formed in us, and we 
be made partakers of the Divine Nature, and the 
image of the Divine Perfections, 

No religion, before the advent of Christ, ever pro- 
duced a purer code of morals than did the religion of 
Buddha. None ever conceived more truly the moral 
attributes of a perfected human nature. But it had 
no power, nor has it any to this day, to give those 
attributes any such incarnation on the earth, or to put 
human nature in such correspondency with the Divine, 
as to give the worshipper an adequate conception of 
the Godhead, or to bring down the Divine energies 
into man, as the working force of human progress, 
aggressive and triumphant over evil and sin. The 
highest state it can produce is a delicious quietism. 
It is a narcotic to dull the sense of pain, not a 
cleanser, a stimulant, an inspirer, and a call to 
victory ; because, in the place where God should be, 
it left a blank spot in the heavens. It was a waiting, 
a listening, a prophecy, towards the fulness of time, 
when, through this painful void, the tidings should 
come down, and the Christ should appear as the 
manifestation of the Divine Personality. 



THE THREE ADVENTS. 119 

But the historic Christ is not enough. Models of 
perfection, human or divine, are not enough. The 
Christ of eighteen hundred years ago must be also 
the Christ of to-day, if He would be to us a living 
Saviour and Redeemer. Patterns of perfection away 
back in the centuries, however lofty and resplendent, 
what are they to me so long as I cannot lift myself 
up to them out of my own weakness and sin ? The 
historic Christ were not enough ; therefore Jesus 
speaks constantly of a second coming, more inward 
and spiritual. " I go away, that I may come again." 
"I will come again unto you." "The Holy Spirit 
was not yet, because the Son of man was not glori- 
fied." " If I go not away, the Comforter will not 
come; but if I depart, I will send him." In other 
words, " I go away to be nearer to my disciples on the 
spiritual side, and to be to them a Mediator, through 
whom the Holy Spirit yields itself to human nature, 
to cleanse it, and renew it, and shape it in the Divine 
Image." Christ merely as an example would only 
hold out to us patterns of perfection to dazzle and 
mock us. To follow Him only as a model man, 
would make us the mere mimics of his virtues ; yea, 
it were a fantastic endeavor to put on a righteousness 
that never would fit to us, and which we never could 
wear ; for who is the man that can do the things that 
He did, and who can use his speech? Inspiration, 
not imitation, is our prime need, as the disciples of 



120 THE THREE ADVENTS. 

the Lord Jesus Christ, and the need of his church 
as an organism fitted to receive Him, and to embody 
his power and spirit on the earth. Our prime need 
is a new influx of power, not from Christ crucified, 
but from the Christ risen and glorified, and inspiring 
his church to-day. His first coming was to put men 
in right relations to each other, to install a society 
and brotherhood purged of the old corrupt selfish- 
ness, consecrated to God and humanity ; in fine, a 
church into which He could come, and which He 
could fill with Himself. That done, the Holy Spirit 
could descend, and sweep the human heart like a 
lyre. For man must be in right relations with his 
brother, before he can be in such relations with God 
as to commune with Him, and receive his spirit. 
There must be a true brotherhood and fellowship, or 
there can be to us no Divine Fatherhood and com- 
munion, out of which the Holy Spirit can descend 
to mould us anew in the Divine Image. And just 
in the degree that the Christian church has been 
such a brotherhood and fellowship, has the promise 
of Jesus been fulfilled, " Lo, I am with you alway ; " 
and the Christian communion and confession have 
been impleted with the power, the comfort, and the 
fire, of the Holy Ghost. The discipleship which is a 
whole consecration to Christ as a Mediator and 
Saviour, present in his church to-day, melting through 
all its rituals, and melting the ice out of its fellow- 



THE THREE ADVENTS. 



ship, is never without the Comforter. And then 
He clothes us, not with any imputed righteousness 
put on from without, but with a real, intrinsic right- 
eousness inspired from within ; and then obedience 
is a delight, and duty is a song of praise. 

I trust I am- speaking to the experience of some of 
you with whom the Christ of history is the Christ of 
consciousness ; that the power of his resurrection is 
the power of a Saviour close at hand, melting the 
heart into contrition and tenderness, hanging the 
bow of peace on every cloud of sorrow, making your 
communion-table seem like the gate of heaven, be- 
cause Christ and the Comforter are there. I believe 
I am reciting the experience of eighteen centuries, 
when I say that forms of religion with the Christ 
taken out of them have the Comforter taken out of 
them also ; and then the words which describe the 
Divine attributes of Fatherhood become emptied of 
their meaning, and shade off into the unknowable 
forces of the universe, and float over us in the wintry 
air; and then prayer becomes a form, for it takes 
hold of nothing ; whereas, with the Christ of to-day 
as a Real Presence, the Father is brought wondrous 
nigh in personal communion, the Divine Heart melts 
into our hearts till the Divine Love overflows ; and 
the angel song of peace and good-will is the pro- 
longed strain of the centuries, singing itself not in 
the upper sky, but in the music of the soul, and 



THE THREE ADVENTS. 



making communion with God in Christ a prayer 
without ceasing. 

Such are his coming in the flesh, and his coming 
in the soul, or the Christ of history, and the Christ 
of consciousness. 

But there is described a last stage of the advent of 
God in Christ, the consummation of the two others. 
Jesus in this high utterance sees the current of our 
human life sweeping on beyond the brink of mortal- 
ity, into the gathering-place of all nations and peoples, 
— the spirit-world, where the generations pass in 
continuous processions to the endless abodes. And 
there He describes yet another coming of the Son of 
man. It is the Divine Word that comes to judgment, 
the Eternal Truth that discerns the souls of men, 
and resolves them into their class and order and 
place ; not by some technical standard, but according 
as they have been true to the claims of brotherhood 
and humanity. " As ye have done it unto one of 
the least of these, ye have done it unto me." " I go 
to prepare a place for you," and, " I will come again, 
and receive you unto myself ; that where I am, there 
ye may be also." 

The only home of the Christian disciple is where 
the love of Christ reigns in its fulness. Hence, when 
this cumbering load of mortality falls away from the 
disciple, the immortal life will be to him a still nearer 
and more complete advent of his Lord. The same 



THE THREE ADVENTS. 123 

voice which called him here to self-consecration, is 
then, " Come, ye blessed, inherit the kingdom." It 
is not the Christ sitting on an outward throne, and 
judging by arbitrary law, but the same Word that 
was made flesh, and which had been the law of the 
Christian life, and the Christ of experience, now 
calling by inward attractions to that immortal fellow- 
ship whose peoples no man can number. And this 
is the judgment-seat of Christ, that discerns the 
Christ-like, and raises them up at the last day. And 
these are the three advents through which God yields 
Himself to our humanity, and purges it, and fills it 
with Himself. 

And as the " Come, ye blessed," simply formulates 
the law of inward attraction that draws heart to heart, 
and mind to mind, when all the hinderances of earth 
have fallen away, so the " Go, ye cursed," formulates 
the law of repulsion with those in whom there is no 
love of Christ, nor love ©f his work, but, in place 
thereof, the selfishness by which men are shut fast in 
their own prison-house, and preyed upon by its tor- 
menting fires. There is no arbitrary law here. 
Christ received is heaven commencing now, and con- 
summating in that state where his love reigns su- 
preme. Christ rejected is the rejection of the means 
of renewal and peace, of all that makes the heavenly 
communion and the heavenly employments sweet and 
attractive. The third advent of the Eternal Word 



124 THE THREE ADVENTS. 

reveals every man as he is ; and, under its resolving 
power, every man determines to his own place. 

Such, then, is the Divine coming in Christ. How 
gradually has He melted through the ages, and into 
the heart of the world ! How slowly has his own 
church understood Him, and received his mind into 
hers ! And yet " the sign of the Son of man in 
heaven " was never more plain than at the present 
hour. Never w r ere more auspicious the omens of a 
new gathering of sects and denominations around his 
Divine Personality ; and here is the central force 
which is to re-organize and guide the distracted and 
groping nations. In both hemispheres, the East and 
the West, the old oppressions are dying, the crushing 
burdens are being lifted off, the shackles of the slave 
are melting, the priestly thrones are shaking, the 
hymns of freedom are ascending, and Christ, in his 
humble poor, and in his despised ones, is claiming re- 
demption. The real progress of Christianity is to be 
measured, not so much by its spread outward, as by 
its descent downward ; not through miles of space, 
but downward from great things to less things, from 
the heights of the world to its plains and valleys, 
from Sundays to week days, from the lord to the 
serf; yea, from man down to the ranks below him, till 
beast and bird shall rejoice in its protection. From 
every burden made light, from every soul redeemed 
from sin and suffering, from any suffering creature 



THE THREE ADVENTS. 



whose pangs you have softened or assuaged, comes 
the Saviour's benediction, " Ye have done it unto 
me." 

Out of every human form, and out of every sentient 
being, from whose suffering we turn away when the 
opportunity is offered, comes the same voice, " Ye did 
it not to me." As the Kingdom of Christ comes in 
this world, He calls us to work in it and for it ; and 
our acceptance or rejection at last are conditioned, 
not so much on what we believe about Him, as on 
our working with Him in full consecration of our- 
selves. For the " Come, ye blessed," and " Go, ye 
cursed," enounce the conditions of heaven or hell. 
What is heaven but a grandly organized beneficence 
and charity, from which angels come and go on 
errands of love and redemption ? And what is hell 
but that state where souls are dungeoned up in them- 
selves, because they never saw God in his little 
ones ? * 

So, let us gather home, to-day, and apply to our- 
selves, the lesson of this practical Christianity of the 
sermon on Mount Olivet. " Consecrated " is the 
word which the Master writes on every faculty of 
mind and body. Consecrated to Divine ends, to 
unselfish living, to the filling-up of golden opportu- 
nities for lifting the heavy burdens, and for diffusing 
the love of Christ through the ties of brotherhood 
that are woven all about us, and for making his image 



126 THE THREE ADVENTS. 

shine brighter in some soul where it was marred and 
broken. For such is the condition of the benediction, 
" Come ye blessed ; as ye have done it unto one of 
the least of these, ye have done it unto me." 



PROGRESS. 



Philippians III. [2: "Not as though I had already attained, either were 
already perfect ; but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also 
I am apprehended of Christ Jesus." 

PERHAPS a clearer rendering would be: "Not 
that I have already won, or am already perfect ; 
but I press on, if indeed I might lay hold on that for 
which Christ laid hold on me." 

I understand Paul in this passage to announce the 
fundamental principle of what we call Liberal Chris- 
tianity. It is a religion of progress, and allows no 
living believer to be satisfied with present attain- 
ments. It supposes that Christianity has dawned 
upon us as a system so vast and comprehending, that 
we refuse to fix it in stationary creeds. When we 
have gained one height which we thought was to be 
the summit, it only shows us other and sublimer 
heights beyond, which before had not come into our 
field of view. For to explain the mysteries of religion 
does not diminish their number. To throw light on 
one subject is to bring into contemplation others, 
which never before had been the object of thought ; 



I2S PROGRESS. 



even as when the clay is chasing back the twilight, 
the twilight is making the same encroachment on the 
realm of total darkness. 

There are, however, two theories about progress. 
One leaves Christ behind, and finally gets Him clear 
out of the way. The other keeps Him on before, a 
pillar of flame that burns brighter and brighter. Let 
me characterize both these methods, and so come to 
the heart of our subject, — Christianity as a liberal or 
ever progressive faith. 

A man opens the New Testament, and finds there 
a remarkable series of events and characters, called 
miracles. He never has seen any thing like them, 
and he cannot believe any thing which has not been 
compassed by his own experience. His first object, 
then, will be to bring Christ within our human 
dimensions, and to disengage and separate the super- 
natural from the natural ; casting out the former, and 
retaining the latter. But what are the supposed 
facts thus to be disengaged and thrown away ? They 
pertain to the conception, the birth, the ministry, the 
works, the death, the resurrection, the ascension, of 
Jesus Christ, and his second coming in the Paraclete, 
or Holy Spirit. After these are taken out, what 
have we left ? The discourses. Well, what are the 
discourses ? Nearly all of them grow out of these 
events, are presupposed by them, and are founded 
upon them. For example : all our Saviour's predic- 



PROGRESS. 129 



tions of his death, resurrection, and second coming 
at the fall of Jerusalem ; and all that discourse about 
the Comforter He was to send, running through the 
Gospels and interlacing them ; and even the Sermon 
on the Mount was preached to the multitude which 
thronged Him on account of his miraculous works. 
What is there left ? Nothing. The Christ has 
vanished from the theatre of common history into the 
clouds, and beyond them, and is out of the way alto- 
gether. Some are frank enough to acknowledge this 
as the final result, and accept it. This new theism 
says, in its last authoritative utterance, " It is time 
to let Jesus rest. His fame has become a grievance 
the free spirit avoids. It closes in the heavens, and 
cuts off communication. It no longer mediates, but 
separates. Jesus is made a stumbling-block to the 
generation. As such he impedes progress, and must 
be removed. Let the people to-day speak of them- 
selves in their own name, m their own spirit." Well, 
Christ being put out of the way, what do these 
people tell us about God, about the soul, about immor- 
tality ? They go on, and use the phraseology of 
religion, the Holy Spirit, immortality, eternal life. 
By and by you find that the former meaning of these 
words has all leaked out of them ; and they hang 
empty, and float in air. The Holy Spirit means, 
not an influence and energy which comes from above 
man, and from a personal Deity, but the moral and 



130 PROGRESS. 



religious sentiment, self-excited and warmed up 
within. Immortality means, not a personal existence 
beyond the grave, but living in the affections and 
memories of those who survive us. " Many winter 
storms," says one of these apostles of the new 
religion, "have swept over the grave of Hegel and 
Goethe ; but does not their spirit still live among us ? 
It is as Christ said, ' Where two or three are met 
together, there am I in the midst of them.' Thus, 
each continues to live according to his works." Per- 
sonally we die, and our consciousness goes out ; our 
qualities survive, to be reproduced in the everlasting 
tides of the infinite; and this is immortality sublimed 
by philosophy. This result is not reached all at once ; 
but, outside of the aid of Christian ideas and personal- 
ities, men gravitate towards these results as surely 
as water to its level. Try the experiment. Blot out 
the Christ, and reconstruct a supernaturalism out of 
your own mind. Probably it will compare with the 
immortal realities as the web which the spider weaves 
out of her own bowels, till she clouds herself all over 
with it, compares with the great world outside of 
earth and sky, surrounded by which her little gos- 
samer swings for an hour. It is a very significant 
fact, that in Germany, long after the idea of a per- 
sonal Christ, a personal Deity, and a personal immor- 
tality had been abandoned by men who professed 
and even preached Christianity from orthodox pulpits, 



PROGRESS. . 131 



the old phraseologies and rituals and names kept on 
just the same. It was some time before it was dis- 
covered, on nearer approach and examination, that 
the citadel was deserted, that the ordnance was all 
wooden, though painted in exact imitation of the old 
guns that had been taken down ; and that, when you 
entered through the gates, you found the city evacu- 
ated, all its armies and peoples gone, all its stores 
of provision removed, its streets as silent as a grave- 
yard, your voice echoing back from deserted habita- 
tions, and your footfall ringing hollow among the 
tombs. Such is the Christianity without any Christ 
in it, and such the kind of progress which it gives us. 
A writer gives us a good illustration of this kind 
of progress. The captain of a coasting-vessel had 
become weary, and, putting the helm into the hand of 
a negro servant, retired to his hammock. But, before 
he retired, he pointed to the North Star, and charged 
the new helmsman always* to keep that in his eye, 
and steer towards it, and all would be well. ' But, in 
the course of the night, the storm came, and the 
winds blew, and the new helmsman found himself in 
a general confusion of sails flapping, and ship whirling 
and reeling and plunging at random. However, he 
came safe out of the storm, as he thought ; and, look- 
ing up for his guiding star, found it away behind him, 
and he was sailing swiftly away from it. Congratu- 
lating himself for his rapid sailing, he went below, 



172 PROGRESS. 



and woke his master. " I have sailed past the North 
Star. Please give me another star to steer by." The 
captain came upon deck, and looked round. u Sailed 
by the North Star ! Don't you see that you have 
turned right about, and are sailing back where you 
started from, and are bound for nowhere ? " This is 
the progress of men who have sailed by the Star of 
our immortal hopes and faith and progress, to those 
realms of emptiness where they ray out their own 
darkness, and hear no voices but the hollow echoes 
of themselves. 

" No sail ahead, 
No look-out's saving song ; 
Death and the dark across their bows, 
And all their reckoning gone." 

Look now one moment at the other kind of 
progress, — progress within Christianity, and with 
Christ as the Divine centre of human faith and hope 
and love. 

A Divine work differs from a human in nothing 
more than in this : that, while our human contrivances 
appear fair on the surface, they are all surface, and 
we soon leave them out, and have done with them ; 
whereas a Divine work opens and opens forever, 
through endless perspectives of beauty. Kepler, who 
discovered so much that he was far beyond his age, 
which could not understand him, exclaims in a sort 



PROGRESS. 133 



of Divine rapture, " I can wait a hundred years for a 
reader, since God waited six thousand years for an 
observer of his works." 

It is just so in that other revelation, God revealing 
Himself in Jesus Christ. If his work had been only 
a human contrivance, like that of all teachers, can we 
imagine that eighteen hundred years would have 
passed away, and, at the end of that time, the choicest 
wisdom of the world would find that it had learned 
only the surface of Him, that it had got only a little 
way beneath the letter of his Word, that still He is so 
far before the age, and before all ages, that we may 
say of Him a thousand times more truly than Cole- 
ridge said of Milton, that He dzvarfs Himself in the 
distance ? It is under this conception of Christ and 
his religion, that Liberal Christianity condemns all 
attempts to reduce them into a human creed, and so 
turn them into fossils. " Away with your human 
creeds ! " said Charming : »" they come between me 
and my Saviour, in whom the fulness of the Divinity 
dwells." 

Let us now see what is progress within Chris- 
tianity, and under the quickening power of its Divine 
revelations. This progress may be briefly specified 
under three heads : — 

1. Our knowledge of a future life. 

2. Our knowledge of God. 

3. Our knowledge of ourselves. 



134 PROGRESS. 



I. The progressive knowledge of the world con- 
cerning the great themes of immortality, under the 
steady light of the Christian revelation, shows how 
inexhaustible are its riches. The age of Christ, and 
the ages that followed, could not understand Him ; 
and why should they ? They were swamped in the 
senses, and had just begun to feel the motions of a 
spiritual nature. And so when He promised to come 
again, and raise the dead, and abolish death, and open 
the heavens, and receive his saints into glory, they 
thought He was to raise the dead bodies out of the 
graveyards at the end of time, and take them up into 
the sky. How poor and inadequate and sensuous the 
conception ! on a plane of meaning how vastly be- 
low that of Christ ! And yet, low as it was, what 
precious immortal truth was housed and protected by 
it, far above the surrounding paganism in which men 
were dying without hope, while the great company of 
Christian martyrs and believers were meeting death 
with triumphal songs ! And so up to this hour all sci- 
ence, philosophy, and discovery have only helped to 
interpret Christ, and raise the world up to the level of 
his meaning, and make us wonder we had not seen it 
before. How progressive has been our knowledge of 
a future life ! And now the shores of immortality, 
instead of being away over the river, come down to 
meet us, are firm already under our feet, with no river 
of death between. Only the frail textures of this 



PROGRESS. 135 



mortal body between, like a tent pitched for a day 
and a night, whose curtains are only to be folded up 
to disclose the endless perspectives of immortality. 
The progress of the Christian faith on this subject 
has been so gradual and yet so sure, that we hardly 
perceive the progress; and we have to go back and 
dig up old sermons, or decipher old tombstones, be- 
fore we discover how much crude and earthly stuff 
has melted out of the creeds, and melted away from 
the imperishable gold. Any little child in the Sun- 
day school knows more to-day on this subject than 
the collective wisdom of the world in the year one. 
And when once the connection between this life and 
the future life is clearly seen and acknowledged as 
not factitious and arbitrary, but as organic and vital, 
there is hardly an article of the Christian faith which 
is not shown in clearer illumination, The resurrec- 
tion, retribution, atonement, heaven and hell,- and eter- 
nal life, are freed from okl errors and absurdities, 
and begin to disclose their wealth of meaning as 
never before. Because, if the resurrection means not 
that of dead bodies from graveyards to a local heaven 
or hell, but of the immortal man out of his mortal 
covering to the heaven or hell he belongs to already, 
and which first enter him before he enters them, 
there is no longer any place for vicarious atonement, 
or imputed righteousness, or arbitrary punishments 
or rewards. Christianity, free of artificial theologies, 



136 PROGRESS. 

becomes the universal religion, through which the 
Christ has ever a new advent to the mind and heart 
of man. " Lo, I am with you alway ! " And still 
how imperfectly do we compass all the wealth of 
truth in the words of Jesus, and all that He meant 
by heaven and hell, and eternal life, and the power 
of his resurrection ! and how fitting still is Paul's 
language on our lips ! — " Not that I have already won, 
nor am already perfect ; but I press on, if indeed I 
might lay hold on that for which Christ laid hold on 
me." 

2. Again : our knowledge of God is steadily pro- 
gressive under the Christian relation. God is infi- 
nite ; and the highest angels do not learn Him out. 
But we get ideas and representations of Him, which 
draw us ever up into his light and love. 

Nature represents Him, but how partially and 
poorly ! Nature, says Agassiz, is the thought of God. 
That were well enough if Nature gave only images 
of beneficence and purity. But, if her snakes and 
reptiles and wolves and destructive poisons are the 
thought of God, then I despair of any worship 
through Nature, that opens a way to the infinite Love. 

So, too, if our sinful and erring humanity gives us 
the only opening up into the nature of God, our case 
is about as bad ; for the serpents and the wolves are 
in that also. But how is it under the Christian reve- 
lation ? There were three great Sanctities taught by 



PROGRESS. 137 



Jesus, — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ; 
and in the name of these He charged his followers 
to go and baptize the nations. It was inevitable that 
the world, just emerging from its besotted idolatries, 
should take these three great Sanctities for three 
Gods, rather than for the methods of the Divine man- 
ifestations. So they did, and so they do still. But, 
even so, what precious truth was housed and shel- 
tered by them until the time when Christianity by 
its inherent life should break in pieces the rude cov- 
erings which confined it, and the narrow formulas 
which crippled it ! Trinitarianism preserved the 
great truth of the Divine Personality, without which 
all worship is only a cry of the bereaved heart into 
vacancy. Trinitarianism, however lame and imper- 
fect its interpretation, saved the world from an idola- 
try which was worse than that, and from an atheism 
which was worse yet, until these three great Sanctities 
were seen in a higher unity with their fullest revela- 
tion and expression in Jesus Christ, the highest form 
in which God can possibly be symbolized, a perfect 
humanity as the unclouded image of his attributes. 
The progressive knowledge of the world and of the 
Christian Church, towards the highest and purest 
theism, is here most beautifully illustrated. Not 
through nature, not through your humanity or mine, 
tainted with moral corruption, can this highest 
knowledge be obtained. It is found in the grand 



138 PROGRESS. 



composite doctrine of the New Testament, — one 
God and one Mediator. The first, one God, preserves 
the Divine Unity ; and the intellect is satisfied. The 
second, one Mediator, preserves the Divine Humanity 
and Personality ; and the heart is satisfied too. I 
know henceforth that those golden words, justice, 
mercy, goodness, forgiveness, and love, do not mean 
one thing as applied to God, and quite another thing 
as applied to men. I know that the Divine qualities 
revealed in and through Jesus Christ are all human 
and personal qualities ; and the hard dogmas of Cal- 
vinism, and the gilded fog of Pantheism, melt and 
vanish alike before the warm splendors of that reve- 
lation. 

3. Lastly, our knoivledge of ourselves. How little 
do we know what we are and what we need, until we 
are brought under the analyzing and searching beams 
of the gospel of Christ ! When we build our theolo- 
gies out of our instincts alone, they are sure to pamper 
our pride and self-love. They put man at the centre, 
and God away off on the circumference. Now Christ 
must be put out of the way, say some, because the 
spirit of the age requires it. They assume that they 
are the age, as the French king assumed that he was 
the state. This sort of conceit is natural to us ; and 
it is the very stuff which the gospel of Christ first 
discovers, and sifts clean out of us, giving us the 
humility of discipleship instead. The highest evi- 



PROGRESS. 139 



dence of Christianity consists in its own power of 
finding men, of cleaving through the incrustations of 
self and sin, of smiting the rocky heart, and making 
all the fountains of its love to gush forth. These are 
the highest miracles of Christianity. Within it and 
beneath it I become conscious of depravity and want 
and privation, and a proud, corrupt selfhood. But, 
under its regenerating and creative power, I see a 
creation rise out of this chaos, more goodly and fair 
than the order of external nature ; experiences more 
rich than the regalements of sense ; a sunshine from 
the Divine face, more bright than summer glories; a 
peace more sweet than the tranquillity of the morn- 
ing; affections purged of self, and enlarged to uni- 
versal love ; calls to duty more loud and clear than 
matin-bells, putting all private wishes and passions in 
the hush of silence ; strength to suffer and to do, that 
comes by prayer ; a power back of personal volitions, 
transfusing the whole betng, and creating it anew ; 
convictions of truth growing bright to the perfect 
day ; in storms, a sense of refuge under the shadow 
of Divine wings. Here are the miracles of Christ ; and 
still He goes before us, and tells us of greater heights 
to be won. And so we end as we began, with the 
same words on our lips : " Not that I have already 
won, or am already perfect ; but I press on, if indeed 
I might lay hold on that for which Christ laid hold on 
me." 



THE THRONES IN HEAVEN. 



Revelation- XX. 4: "I saw thrones/' 

THRONES in heaven appear often in the imagery 
of the Seer of the Apocalypse. They appear 
in gradation, rank above rank ; and three grades are 
defined and distinguished. There is the throne of 
the Supreme, who sits thereon, encircled with rain- 
bows ; and the worshippers rest not, day nor night, 
saying, " Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which 
was and is, and is to come ! " 

There is the throne of the Lamb, who receives 
homage almost as great, who draws around Him the 
hallelujahs of every creature which is in heaven and 
on the earth, and in the under-world and in the sea; 
whose name is coupled with that of God in receiving 
adoration ; who sitteth down on the throne of God, 
or who is in the midst of the throne, so that the 
same throne is called the throne of God and the Lamb. 
The same divine predicates are applied to Him as 
to the Almighty, — Alpha and Omega, the Beginning 
and the End, the First and the Last. And He feeds 
the saints from the midst of the throne, and judges 



THE THRONES IN HEAVEN. 141 

the sinners who hide under rocks from the wrath 
of the Lamb. 

Then there is the third and lower rank of thrones, 
— those of the twenty-four Elders; thrones of judg- 
ment for the redeemed who are to reign with Christ; 
and the promise is given, that, as Christ sits down 
with the Father on God's throne, so the saints shall 
sit down with Christ on his throne. 

You know very well what some of the literalists 
make of all this. And, in my judgment, some of the 
Unitarian literalists make the worst work of any- 
body. It is the worship of a created being, made 
almost as high as God, but not quite ; so exalted that 
he sits on the throne of the Almighty, and receives 
worship such as no enlightened pagan ever gave to 
inferior divinities. Yet it is not supreme worship, 
they say, but analogous to that paid to sovereigns 
and magistrates, only more magnificent, as to one 
whom God has exalted very highly ; for, does He not 
promise the same to his saints who are to sit with 
Him on thrones of judgment ? And what is the 
judgment seat of Christ, to which his saints, and we 
his humble followers, are thus supposed to be invited ? 
Turn to the twenty-fifth chapter, and you will see. 
The Son of man comes in glory to summon all 
peoples to his bar, sits on the throne of his glory, and 
separates the saints from the sinners, — those to 
eternal life, these to eternal punishment : a very 



142 THE THRONES I iV HEAVEN. 

singular judicial process, if the saints themselves are 
on the thro tie of judgment, and not at the judgment 
bar! 

This imagery of the Apocalypse only puts into 
concrete and objective form the figurative language 
of Jesus in the Gospels. When events were moving 
on to their crisis, Peter came to Jesus with the 
question, " Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed 
thee : what shall we have therefore ? " Then Jesus 
assures his apostles in reply, " When the Son of man 
shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall 
sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of 
Israel." The ambition of two of them took fire at 
the prospect. They wanted the highest thrones, one 
at the right and one at the left of Christ ; and, soon 
after that, the two sons of Zebedee came with their 
mother secretly, and applied for such promotion. 
What was the answer of Jesus? One of the most 
solemn rebukes of human ambition it ever received, 
and one of the most touching lessons of humility and 
self-sacrifice : " Whosoever will be chief among you, 
let him be your servant ; even as the Son of man 
came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. To 
sit on my right hand and on my left, is not mine to 
give. Ye shall indeed drink of my cup ; but it will 
be a cup of trembling." Has Jesus left these lessons 
behind, and gone into the heavens, thence to address 
a more potent stimulus to our mean selfishness and 



THE THRONES IN HEAVEN. 143 

our pompous vanities than the empty grandeurs of 
earth could ever give ? When we undertake to inter- 
pret a symbolical book, we should not mix up symbol 
and letter into a jumble. What a slough of insane 
nonsense the Apocalypse has been made of in that 
way, any one may see by reading over the piles of 
commentary under which it has been buried. But 
keep consistently to the symbolic meaning ; and then, 
though we may not be drawn up to its sublime heights 
of vision, we shall have serene and blissful openings 
through which come beholdings of truth, as through 
gates ajar. 

Persons in the Apocalypse, and the imagery among 
which persons appear, symbolize truths, — even Chris- 
tianity as a system of truth in its power of judging, 
regenerating, and saving mankind. What are the 
apostolic thrones ? Seats raised aloft, with the fisher- 
men of Galilee robed royally, and sitting thereon as 
the judges of their fellow-men, — they to whom the 
first injunction came, "Judge not, that ye be not 
judged" ? - Not at all ; but the apostolic truths which 
they represented, applied in their royal power to sub- 
due and to save, and beneath which those twelve men 
have learned by this time to bring themselves in lowly 
self-surrender. And what is the worship of the Lamb ? 
Of some created, dependent being, receiving joint 
honors with God, and while sitting on his throne 
with the hallelujahs of the universe rising around 



144 THE THRONES IN HEAVEN. 

him ? Not at all. It is the worship of God as seen 
in the Word, the Divine Truth that reveals Him, 
that Divine Truth which was made flesh, — the wor- 
ship of God as humanized to our finite conceptions 
and deepest spiritual needs. Does any enlightened 
person need to have it proved to him that the " Lamb 
as it had been slain, seen in the midst of the throne 
of God," is not letter, but symbol ? — not a Lamb lit- 
erally, nor a man who had been put to death, but the 
Divine Nature symbolized to us as Sacrifice, Mercy, 
and Love, — love so tender that, like our human love, 
it can be wounded, even bleed for us, can give itself 
away for our redemption, yea, can be crucified and 
killed, — killed out from the impenitent soul ; a love 
of which the sacrifice on Calvary is only an outward 
sign, but the truest and the tenderest which our 
earthly annals can afford. Such are the sublime 
doctrines set forth by these thrones in heaven, — 
whether they be apostolic, or the throne of God and 
the Lamb. 

But let us come to the great practical lessons which 
are evolved, and which speak to our condition, from 
these passages of the Divine- Word. There is a les- 
son of Christian humility, and there is a lesson per- 
taining to the Christian experience. 

t. I saw thrones, — thrones of men who try to 
sit on the judgment-seat of Christ, or who steal his 
truth, and try to make it their own, and trick them- 



THE THRONES IN HEAVEN. , 145 

selves out in its splendor and royalty. To preach 
Christ is to put one's self altogether out of the way, 
— to hide one's self, as it were, in Him, — so that 
his word and doctrine may have a more unobscured 
and perfect forthgoing. When you see a sect or 
denomination bringing out its great men, who cover 
each other continually with garments of praise and 
adulation, you may be pretty sure they are fast losing 
sight of the Master. How often do these idols 
appear upon the stage to receive the incense of the 
hour, and then to be dashed down again, or to be cov- 
ered with mire when they cease to echo back the adu- 
lations, or phrase the notions, of the hour ! No surer 
test could be applied, to determine the state of the 
times, than, how far persons are made to figure in the 
foreground, and not these great and shining truths 
before whose coming persons fade out of sight, yea, 
before which every man becomes great only as he 
hides himself in those beams in whose shillings he is 
less than a mote in the waves of a summer's noon. 
How instinctively do we give the name of " personal- 
ities " to those controversies in which men put for- 
ward their little selves till they cease to represent 
ideas ! When churches are gathered around men, 
dependent upon the sensation men can produce, to be 
played upon by words, or amused by the sky-rockets 
of eloquence, they are churches no more, but a mob 
of people to dispute when the show is over, and the 



146 THE THRONES IN HEAVEN. 

rockets have gone out. Oh ! I have been to churches 
where the preaching intellectually was about as poor 
as it could be, but where the Christ, in his Word, 
seemed all the more to come in, and thrill every soul 
as with the pulsings of the Holy Ghost, and where 
every one had a sense of mingled reverence and 
delight, as he felt his feet taking hold of the Rock of 
Ages.' What are preachers with their rhetoric, where 
the heavens are open, and God is coming down, and 
the great doctrines of Christianity, loud as the sound" 
of many waters, are speaking to the conscience and 
to the heart, and to the ear of Christian faith, and 
bringing salvation nigh ? I have been to church, too, 
where there was neither God nor Christ, but where 
some preacher had usurped the place of both, playing 
upon crowds without ideas, or with only negative 
ones, and where the crowd was to melt away to-mor- 
row, like a mob seeking some new diversion. 

Only when the apostolic thrones arise in their real 
grandeur, not thrones of men but thrones of judg- 
ment, where Divine Truth sits in its royalty and sov- 
ereignty, bringing home to the conscience the mean- 
ness of self and the littleness of its pride, and laying 
it prone in the dust with " God be merciful to me a 
sinner;" opening the future down the long avenues 
of its retributions ; showing where the ways part up 
and down, and showing the way to pardon, purity, and 
peace, — only there are such thrones as are set in 



THE THRONES IN HEAVEN. 147 

heaven. And before these thrones persons disappear 
and hide themselves ; and the voice comes now as 
ever, " He that is greatest among you, let him be your 
servant; even as the Son of man came not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life 
a ransom for many. Ye shall indeed drink of my 
cup ; but it must be a cup of sacrifice, and, to your 
ambition and your pride, a cup of trembling." 

2. I saw thrones. What thrones does the vision 
disclose in the opening future ? See how the apos- 
tolic thrones of judgment have been rising ever since, 
towering above the strifes and ambitions of men. 
When St. John had this vision of the future, Rome 
was ruling the whole world, and the Christian martyrs 
were pouring out their lives at the foot of the Roman 
power, and John was in banishment at Patmos. But 
look down a few years, and behold the change ! 



Jehovah's sway is given to Jove ; 
But, lo ! Christ's standard is unfurled : 

The eagle cowers before the dove ; 
Before the nations' wondering eyes 
The apostolic thrones arise." 

And they have been rising ever since higher and 
higher above the strifes and tumults of this world. 
The Christian truth, on its throne of authority, has 
been gaining year by year in its power over persons 



148 THE THRONES IN HEAVEN. 

and personal strifes. The Divine Creed of the Bible, 
above all private creeds and personal interpretations 
of it, gains in authority, I think, day by day. It be- 
comes daily more profane to dispute over truths which 
ought to command us and hold us in reverent awe ; 
before which inquiry and comparison, and mutual 
help, are the proper attitude, but beneath which per- 
sonal disputing ought to be hushed as a clap of 
thunder hushes the noise of a rookery. Why, they 
talk about the nature of Christ, and the psychology of 
God, which they propose to analyze as a naturalist 
would analyze a sea-shell or an insect's wing ! To 
understand Christ, we must follow Him ; to know 
"God, we must obey Him, — obey Him in thought and 
in heart, as well as deed. And then He draws us up 
into his refuge, and tells us the secret of his nature ; 
for He gives us a living experience of his love. 

3. I saw thrones. And high abo\~e them all is 
" the throne of God and the Lamb." This it is 
which is circled with rainbows, token that the 
storms are over. What an image to symbolize to 
us, and open out to us, the wealth of the Divine 
Nature in all its goodness and tenderness ! No 
wonder that St. John dwelt upon the image so 
fondly. He had walked with Jesus through the 
fields of Esdraelon, where the shepherds lead the 
flocks beside the still waters. There he had seen 
the shepherds carry the lambs in their arms, and 



THE THRONES IN HEAVEN 149 

feed them. He had seen the lamb offered in 
sacrifice on the altar. All this imagery passes 
into his vision ; and he looks up, and sees the 
Lord of heaven no longer as on Sinai, clothed in 
lightnings, but clothed in rainbows, and imaged 
forth as Sacrifice, Mercy, and Peace. Type and 
symbol, too, of the Christian experience ; for when 
our angers, our strifes, our passions, keep us away 
from Him, He is a consuming fire. His nature 
and ours are in lurid antagonism. We may talk of 
the love of God, but it turns to lightning around 
us. Come to Him in filial obedience and self- 
surrender, and before long you look up, and there 
are thrones in heaven, and above them all is the 
throne of God and the Lamb, and all around it are 
the rainbows of Peace. Then and there we enter 
the still region that lies away from broils, and, in the 
full experience of the Divine forgiveness, we sing our 
Coronation Song : — ■ 

" Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive 
power and riches, and wisdom and strength, and 
honor and glory, and blessing ; for Thou hast re- 
deemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred 
and tongue and people and nation." 



PEACE BY POWER. 



Matthew X. 34 : "I came not to send peace, but a sword." 

IGHTEEN hundred years of conflict is the 
summing-up of the external history of Chris- 
tianity. There have been intervals of peace ; but 
these intervals have been of the nature of a truce 
rather than of a settled and universal amity. Some 
of the great wars, modern and mediaeval, may be 
traced directly or indirectly to the new element which 
Christianity has brought in for working out the civil- 
ization of modern times. Our war of independence 
could never have taken the form it did, perhaps 
would never have occurred at all, had some of the 
first principles of the gospel not been involved in it ; 
and our late civil war was an open and direct con- 
flict of Christian civilization with the old barbarism 
which sought to quench the light of that civilization 
in Christian blood. 

For, what is the element which Christianity has 
brought into the world, and which struggles for supre- 
macy ? It is the worth of man. It is the new and 
higher valuation placed on the human soul. It is the 



PEACE BY POWER. 151 

worth of man, not merely as a part of the state, nor 
as a subject of government and a means to its tem- 
poral ends ; but his worth individually and personally, 
having in himself an end, to accomplish which, both 
Church and State are, or should be, means and helps. 
The Christ reveals to the individual consciousness 
a capacity and destiny reaching beyond time into the 
endless future ; and reveals that the highest offence 
against God and humanity is to violate the conditions 
of human development and progress. To restore the 
Divine image in the soul, and show the worth of 
human nature for endless progress and enjoyment, 
and remove out of the way every thing that hinders 
their realization, — it was for this that Christ came 
into the world. But what loads of effete supersti- 
tions were piled upon the soul, and were crushing it 
into the dust! what hoary despotisms, both Jewish and 
pagan ! What revolutions must be set going, heaving 
society from its old foundations, what commotions, 
what wars in divers places, before the burdens could 
be lifted off, and the soul be set free on its upward 
way ! The vast multitude of human beings were but 
as the swarms of a day, before the tyrannies of the 
age ; but, in each individual of those multitudes, 
Christianity revealed a royalty which in the eye of 
God outshone all the grandeurs of earth. 

Of course, the first thing Jesus brought was a 
sword. Not in his own person, not girded with it 



152 PEACE BY POWER. 

Himself, nor binding it on his disciples. This plain- 
ly is not his meaning. On the contrary, his charge 
to his disciples was, " Be ye wise as serpents, and 
harmless as doves." But He caused it to be brought. 
He furnished the occasion of its flashing from 
innumerable scabbards, with the purpose of cleaving 
down this new religion which put the human soul 
above all temporal interests and royalties, and bade 
them serve and do it homage. It was drawn first on 
Himself. The Jewish ecclesiasticism was already 
undermined bv Him. He had inaugurated a moral 
revolution that was rolling from Galilee up to the 
capital, and rolling under it. The priesthood must 
go down, or Christianity must. It was Calvary over 
against Mount Moriah. It was the invisible New 
Jerusalem against the old Jerusalem. And it has 
been Calvary ever since, — Calvaries all over the 
earth, where the New Jerusalem has been descending 
and bringing redemption to the soul, — over against 
the old Jerusalem which wields the sword against 
it, but in vain. 

Such, it seems to me beyond question, is our 
Saviour's meaning in the text where He is putting his 
religion over against the false religions which were 
to oppose it, and try to extinguish it in its own blood. 
It would divide friends, neighbors, families ; for the 
new converts would come out of all conditions. The 
new gospel would take a deeper hold of human 



PEACE BY POWER. 153 

nature than any natural or earthly ties, parting men 
by new divisions right and left, leaving the old heath- 
enism and Judaism on one side, and on the other the 
new converts out of them, to be imprisoned, perse- 
cuted, and slain ; and so the brother would deliver up 
the brother to death, and the father the child, and 
the children would rise up against their parents, and 
a man's foes be they of his own household. Such 
was the prophecy in this tenth chapter, and such the 
graphic history which fills it up. " Not peace, but 
a sword." Though not in a literal sense, yet in a 
secondary and spiritual sense, these words apply 
undoubtedly to Christ and Christianity. The sword 
•of the Spirit is mightier than all earthly weapons ; 
and this by no means does our Saviour renounce 
or lay aside. His religion was to be aggressive 
and uncompromising beyond all others. He would 
accept no niche in the heathen Pantheon, merely to 
be tolerated there. He meant to overthrow all the 
idols of the time, and sweep them clean away, and 
reign Himself alone. He might have avoided all 
persecution by compromise, or by withdrawing from 
the conflict, as the Essenes did, into the mere luxury 
of private devotion ; and then, like the Essene reli- 
gion, Christianity would soon have faded from the 
earth, and humanity would have groaned under its bur- 
den forever. But, no. His disciples went forth in the 
battle against wrong, to conquer and slay it, and hold 



1 5 4 PEA CE BY PO WER. 

their lives cheap in the conflict ; and no friendships 
were to hinder the loyalty of the disciple to Christ 
and his doctrine. " He that loveth father or mother 
more than me is not worthy of me ; and he that lov- 
eth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of 
me." Such is the spiritual meaning. " Not peace, 
but a sword." 

There are some practical lessons which come from 
the subject, which I want to draw out and apply. 

And the first pertains to the true relation and bear- 
ing of the Church of Christ to the unbeliefs and evils 
of the time. Two courses or methods are recom- 
mended. One is to make peace with the world, to 
compromise with it ; to sheathe the sword of the 
Spirit, and give over the conflict between Christian- 
ity and unbelief, and concede that nothing beyond this 
present life is known with sufficient certainty to war- 
rant any dispute about it. As we were taught the 
other day, by one who occupies a Christian pulpit, we 
might draw the atheist into our Christian commun- 
ions by saying to him, " We have the same difficulties 
that you have ; we are only inquirers about this 
matter: come join us, and inquire with us. This is 
the true liberality in religion, to do away with all 
creeds, since one is as good as another, and none are 
of any authenticity or value." And so a missionary 
at the West, who went to establish a society where 
there were known to be philosophical unbelievers, left 



PEACE BY POWER. 155 

out from his .published articles the idea of God, in the 
hope of winning their confidence and co-operation. 
And what is the answer which the world makes to 
this policy ? It is this : " If you Christians have in- 
quired eighteen hundred years on these subjects, 
without coming to any conclusions, you are not the 
people for us to go to school to ; much less if, having 
reached conclusions, you are afraid to announce them 
and stand by them as the strength and inspiration of 
your moral manhood." Infidelity is bold enough and 
honest enough in its denials ; and it will have only 
contempt for any form of religion which tries to split 
the difference between yes and no. 

So, then, the other method is affirmation, aggression, 
and conflict of good with evil, and truth with error, 
where the sword of the Spirit flashes with its sharp- 
est and clearest splendors. Christianity is aggress- 
ive, or it is nothing. The Crmrch is militant, or it 
goes under; for the grand truths it holds — of the 
Divine Personality, of immortality, of the spiritual 
nature of man, of his probation here, of his moral 
responsibilities which hold him to endless retribu- 
tions, of his origin, dignity, and worth, as the heir of 
an endless life — >are in sharp contrast with the nega- 
tions of unbelief which make him only a creature of 
this world, to be extinguished in it at last. So that 
still the motto is, " Not peace, but a sword." And 
there is another lesson. Observe, the great virtues 



1 5 6 PEA CE BY PO WER. 

come into exercise only by moral conflict and spirit- 
ual warfare. In a dead and sleepy uniformity, the 
reason is benumbed and dwarfed, and there is room 
only for cowardice, and torpor of both mind and 
heart, and indolence and indifference to all truth ; and 
that is spiritual death. In conflict there is the enlarge- 
ment of the reason, and the waking-up of all the fac- 
ulties, and full scope for candor and magnanimity 
and enlightened tolerance, and the sweet charities 
which come from a profounder knowledge of the 
wants, the weaknesses, and the fallibilities of human 
nature. A little Christianity, or a false one, will not 
cure the native conceit and arrogance of the human 
heart ; and all bitterness and bigotry come not of 
religion, but the want of it. They are the virus of 
the natural man, that needs to be purged away. For 
that reason, Christ is to be preached, and his truth 
made aggressive ; for, the nearer you come to the 
heart of Christ, so much the more will you be clothed 
in his gentleness and grace, and so much more of the 
heavenly temper will be transfused through the bat- 
tle of right with wrong. Christianity is the most lib- 
eral where there is the most of it ; because there we 
learn the worth of human souls, and the dangers that 
beset them, and are brought into full commiseration 
with all their wants and woes ; and because there, if 
anywhere, our pride and arrogance are taken out of 
us, and all personal exaltation is rebuked as we affirm 



PEACE BY POWER. 157 

the great verities of the gospel. Liberality or com- 
prehension or Broad Church is not the aggregation 
of all sorts of opinions and things, but the vital belief 
and practice of those which bring you into most lov- 
ing fellowship with all humanity and consecration to 
its welfare ; and it demands just as well the rejection 
of those that would dash down its hopes of regenera- 
tion and progress. Christ Himself denounced only 
hypocrisy and wrong. To these his words were 
forked lightnings. To simple benighted unbelief, to 
mere errors of creed or errors of practice, his warfare 
was like the conflict of the dawn with the darkness ; 
and his prayer, " Father, forgive them." None so 
comprehending as He ; and none whose doctrine dis- 
criminated more sharply the truth that cleanses and 
inspires human nature, from the falsities that darken 
and lead astray. For the sake of humanity, then, for 
the sake of charity, for the sake of that love of man 
which has all the gall of the natural heart purged out 
of it, and all the tenderness of God breathed into it, 
— not peace, but a sword, for the falsities that hinder 
the reign of Christ on earth and in the human soul. 

And there is another lesson still. For the sake of 
peace itself, that peace which is profound and real, 
and not a patched-up truce with evil and wrong, Jesus 
brings first the sword of the Spirit. There are two 
kinds of peace. There is the peace that comes by com- 
promise with evil, and there is the peace that comes by 



158 PEACE BY POWER. 

conquest over evil. The first is a hollow truce : the 
last is the peace of God that passeth understanding. 
The first comes from moral weakness: the last is 
peace by power. Look into your own heart or your 
own experience, if you are a Christian man or woman, 
and you will have a perfect representation of the way 
in which the kingdom of God comes on. It comes 
by conquest, if it comes at all. You cannot lie down 
and sleep, and let the evils in you have their own 
way, — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and 
the pride of life, the love of self and the love of the 
world and the love of ease, the doubts and the fears 
which are born of unbelief, or the passions the 
angers and the hatreds that are born of sin. You 
cannot make peace with all these. No, you must 
grapple with them, and slay them, and have them 
under your feet ; and then comes peace, full of joy, 
as Channing says, without one throb of tumultuous 
passion, the prelude of the peace of a happier world. 
This is the peace by power. The conflict may be 
long and arduous ; but this is the auspicuous consum- 
mation. And this we always pray for in the words, 
" Thy kingdom come." It is the battle of life within 
you every day, — the battle between the world with 
its encroaching line of conquest, and the kingdom of 
God which comes on to take possession. One recedes 
as the other advances; and, alas ! how many go down 
under the god of this world, and its wave of conquest 



PEACE BY POWER. 159 

closes over them, because the flaming sword of the 
Spirit has never been drawn ! The kingdom of God 
is within you, if you ever attain it; and it comes 
not by compromise, but it comes by power. So Jesus 
conquered before ever He tried to conquer the world. 
His first conflict was in that forty clays' battle .with 
temptation ; and not till the end of it, came the peace 
within from the overshadowing wings of the minis- 
tering angels. We must follow Him to the same 
heights of peace, if we ever reach them, for there is 
no roundabout way ; and we shall not be borne to 
them on beds of ease, nor on the tides of our 
passions. We fight our way, or we never get there. 
And only from the heights won by conquest can we 
take up the song of victory, — 

Lo, the pathway lies behind us, 

Where we marched o'ej heaps of slain ; 
Where our vanquished foes lie bleeding, 

All along the battle-plain : 
All the sordid troop of Mammon, 

Coward Fear, and Lust of Praise, 
Death that cast his baleful shadow 

Over all our darkling ways, — • 

Unbelief that feeds on ashes, 

Fear of man that brings a snare, 
Selfish Grief, and selfish Pleasure, 

Carnal Pride, and haggard Care, 



1 60 PEA CE BY PO WER. 



Satan in fair form transfigured, 



To install our vaunting Reason 
On the eternal throne of God. 



Such are the enemies in this conflict of Christ with 
the world; and, these everywhere overcome, the song 
over Bethlehem floats over the whole world, " Peace 
on earth, and good-will amongst men." 



THE ATONEMENT. 



John I. 29 : " Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the 
world.'' 

THE Christian atonement is undoubtedly the 
central doctrine of the New Testament, — say 
rather of the Old and the New Testament both, — 
and of all religion which is worthy of the name. 
Very unfortunately, it has been made the topic of 
dispute and controversy, though that were to be 
expected ; for what touches the supreme interest of 
men must needs be a matter of inquiry, and therefore 
of debate. It is only on one side, however, that there 
is any room for debate among those who receive the 
New Testament as a rule of faith. As a subject of 
philosophy and speculation, involving the reasons of 
the Divine Government, the subject branches off 
into the unknown and the unknowable. Brought 
home to us in its practical bearing, it is so plain that 
the wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot miss the 
message which the gospel brings. 

Have you never noticed, on reading your Bibles, 
that indescribable tone of concern with which always 



1 62 THE ATONEMENT. 

the Divine message comes to men ? Even if we 
could not distinctly articulate the doctrines of the 
gospel, we should know by this tone of grieving 
mercy that something very great was at stake ; that 
the Divine Mind looked into gulfs of ruin too deep 
for us to fathom, and saw heights of bliss and glory 
towering beyond our sight ; and that there was, if I 
may so say, the deep anxiety of the Divine Mind to 
save men from the one, and raise them up into the 
fruition of the other. This tone of the message, 
quite as much as the matter of it, is what searches 
us and finds us when reading our Bibles ; and it gives 
unction to that deep and tender pathos which 
breathes through the discourses of Jesus, as in the 
farewell to Jerusalem : — 

" How often would I have gathered thy children 
as a bird gathers her brood under her wings ! " 

The atonement is oneness with God, — man rec- 
onciled. Its consummation is described by Jesus, 
" That they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in 
me, and I in thee ; that they may be one in us, and 
that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." 

1. Christ as a sacrifice ; 

2. What that sacrifice means and represents ; 

3. And what conditions it requires of us, — these 
three topics will unfold the subject, and bring it home 
to us. 

1. " Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the 



THE ATONEMENT. 163 

sin of the world." The image is a very expressive 
and a very beautiful one. A lamb was an offering 
for sin, — a sacrifice slain for its expiation. Hence 
Jesus is called the Lamb of God, at the opening of 
John's Gospel, where, in his first revealing Divine 
gracefulness, He appears before the evangelist, and 
the Baptist says, " Here is the Lamb, the sacrifice 
that is to take away the sin of the world." 

And it tones the discourses of Jesus and the New 
Testament throughout. Jesus is the first Reformer 
we read of who, at the beginning, took his own death 
into his plan, as if he knew the plan were a failure if 
that were left out.' Hence the indescribable pathos 
that swells through his discourses. It is not despond- 
ency nor complaint, but that Divine sympathy that 
tinges every thing with the thought of sacrifice. 
His body is broken bread, his blood is flowing wine, 
and the oil that balmed his weary feet was bahning 
them for burial. All through the fourth Gospel we 
never lose sight of the Son of God as the Lamb that 
was to be slain. 

But let us not mistake. It is not merely the death 
on the cross that makes Him a sacrifice for man, and 
cleanses man from sin. By dwelling too grossly on 
his physical agonies, we may even lose sight of the 
great truth itself. There was suffering of another 
kind. The burden of suffering and woe which lay 
upon a sinful world was all laid upon Him. If you 



1 64 THE ATONEMENT. 

would know what that is, think, some of you, of your 
own experience. Have you watched at a friend's 
side, and found every throb of anguish which he felt 
going through you ? Have you found as parent, or 
brother, or sister, that the woes of your own domestic 
circle and society were drawn up into your own heart, 
and were constantly rending its finest strings and 
tendrils ? Then you will have some conception of 
the sufferings of Him whose family was the whole 
race of man ; who was clothed in our humanity, 
complete and full-orbed ; whose strings and tendrils 
clasped every child of sorrow ; who drew all human 
suffering up into Himself, and bore it upon his feel- 
ing as a burden to be removed. Yea, to get a full 
conception of Christ as the Lamb of God, we must 
remember that He stood on a height where all the 
future lay open before Him, so that the woes and 
sufferings, not of the time then present, but of our 
humanity down all that opening future, were to Him 
a present reality, and lay as a present burden upon 
his soul. It was not the sins of men imputed to 
Him. No ! It was sin, in its nature and its results, 
lying as a burden on the race of man, through the 
whole of which he felt the drawings of the ties of 
brotherhood, and which He drew up into his great 
Divine Heart till it broke under a weight too heavy 
to be borne. Hence you see the burden of meaning 
in the words, " God laid on Him the iniquities of 



THE ATONEMENT. 165 



us," — yours and mine, and those of every member of 
this great brotherhood of mankind. The sufferings 
of the cross were for Him of only six hours' duration, 
whereas in most cases they were a prolonged agony of 
days and weeks. In the case of our Saviour, the 
sufferings were short, because the agony of heart and 
mind had already been so great and prolonged, that 
the physical life was well-nigh drained to its very 
dregs. Such was the Lamb of God made an offering 
for sin, to take away the guilt of the world. 

2. But this truth leads us to another and a higher 
one. Jesus as the Christ is the expression of the 
Divine Nature, — the Divine Fatherhood, in fact, 
brought nigh to man, and openly revealed. Here, as 
nowhere else, is the Divine Personality made mani- 
fest, the only begotten Son who dwells in the bosom 
of the Father, and brings Him forth to view. Hence 
the sufferings of Christ image forth to us the Divine 
sufferings for the sins of men. Compassion ! Sym- 
pathy ! How coldly do men talk of the Fatherhood 
of God, and then proceed straightway to discharge 
the doctrine of all significance ! as if He dwelt apart, 
and looked from a distance upon the sins and suffer- 
ings of men, perhaps sending prophets to them to 
denounce punishment, or promise pardon on repent- 
ance. The cross! Why, it symbolizes the truth 
that God bears a cross in his own feeling, that there 
is a wounding and a bleeding of the Divine Love with 



1 66 THE ATONEMENT 

every rejection of its pleadings and every sin. And 
hence we find that this image of sacrifice and suffer- 
ing is carried up. to the Divine Nature itself. And 
so the same evangelist, when the heavens were 
opened to him, and God was revealed as Divinely 
Human, saw in the midst of the throne a Lamb as it 
had been slain. Nobody takes this in the letter, or 
believes that the Divine Nature can suffer physically ; 
but to believe that God is a person and not an insen- 
sate force, and that the Father is imaged forth in the 
Son, is to believe also that the Divine Affection can 
and must draw up into itself the griefs and suffer- 
ings of our entire humanity. 

God as revealed in the Christ is a Father in the 
midst of his family. What would you think of an 
earthly father who saw his family dying around him, 
dying, too, by their own fault and their own guilti- 
ness, and yet did not suffer with them in heart, mind, 
and soul ; yea, whose life-chords did not run down 
through all their griefs, and draw them up into his 
own nature, as on electric wires ? And such is God 
in his Fatherhood ; not away off in the heavens, but 
immanent in all our affairs, hidden close beneath our 
consciousness, present by a more still and inaudible 
pulsation in every beating of our hearts, taking into 
his own feeling the anguish that pierces ours ; and so 
his own Divine Nature, that suffers with ours, is 
imaged in the Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
world. 



THE ATONEMENT. 167 

Do not say that this is a questioning of the Divine 
Perfections. The Divine Nature were not perfect if 
it were only stone and ice, like the natures of some 
men, that never melt and flow in drops of mercy. It 
is the very height of its perfection that brings out of 
the Divine Fatherhood a daily sacrifice for the sin 
of the world, and hence imaged forth in time by the 
Lamb of God, made a whole offering for human 
redemption. 

Such, then, is the Christ as a sacrifice; and such is 
the truth which the sacrifice represents, leading us 
upward into the wealth of the Divine Nature itself, 
and the very heart of the Divine Mercy. 

3. But we come to our third and practical point, 
where the subject bears directly upon us, and comes 
home to each one of us. What conditions does this 
sacrifice require of us ? 

It requires faith, — faith in Qirist as the Lamb of 
God, and faith in that eternal and costly sacrifice 
which is imaged forth, as a condition of seeing our- 
selves as we are, and of seeing the nature and con- 
sequence of all our disobedience. Not till we see the 
burden of our sin lying heavy on the Divine Heart, 
are we brought to any thing worthy the name of 
repentance, or to any real atonement and reconcilia- 
tion with God, — not till we see every sin of ours as 
a stab at the Divine Feeling itself. 

There was a man given over to debauchery and 



1 68 THE ATONEMENT. 

sin, from whose mind and heart the threatenings of 
the law and the thunders of the pulpit had for years 
rebounded as from casings of iron. But at length, 
in the depths of his sin, the Holy Spirit reached him 
in a form that arrested and held him. A light not 
of earth seemed falling around his feet. He looked 
up, and he saw a Divine Sufferer on his cross, though 
that cross sent out radiations of glory ; and a voice 
fell down upon his ear, " Have I suffered all this for 
you, and is that the return you make?" And the 
man whom threatenings had never reached found his 
whole nature melted down in penitence, and fluid in 
the Divine Hand, and run anew in heavenly moulds. 
And the impenitent unbeliever went forth with a 
heart throbbing with the love of Christ and the love 
of man, and with a faith tongued with celestial 
fire. He became one of the flaming heralds of the 
Cross. Vision, do you say ? — morbid imagination ? 
But morbid imaginations never change men from 
morbid iniquity to moral health and a new heavenly 
life ; whereas the Spirit of God, all-searching and all 
adaptive, does reach men in forms and representations 
suited best to their cases, and suited best to bear in 
the Sovereign Grace upon the soul. 

What, then, are the conditions which the Divine 
Sacrifice requires of us ? Faith, — faith in God, not 
as a mere abstraction, not as a sovereign who only 
threatens you with the punishment of hell, but as a 



THE ATONEMENT. 169 

Being whose love you wound, and whose mercy you 
grieve, with every act of disobedience. Never does a 
man see his sins in their true character till he sees 
them so opposed to the Divine Nature that in every 
one of them his Lord is crucified anew. Never will 
the wrong done to his brother appear to him in its 
true light till he looks up, and sees a Divine Sufferer 
who says to him, " Because you have done it unto 
him, you have done it unto me." Never is repentance 
any thing but a selfish fright and fear of punishment, 
never is reformation any thing but an outward con- 
formity, till we look up, and see through our tears 
the Lamb in the midst of the throne. Never is the 
Divine Mercy any thing to us but a cold proclamation 
of pardon, till we receive it as a Mercy which has 
bled under wounds that we have inflicted. But, 
when it is thus received, we enter into the heart of 
it ; and the sense of forgiveness is indescribably pro- 
found and tender ; and we enter into the Divine 
meaning, " Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh 
away the sin of the world." 

And only then do we enter into such communion 
with God, and become so far forth partakers of his 
nature, that our faith in Him gives us the heart of 
flesh, and the morality and charity that are filled with 
the throbbings of his love. Paul worshipped God as 
a Sovereign, after the straitest and most rigid of 
rituals ; and he was very much like the God he wor- 



170 THE ATONEMENT. 

shipped, hard and unrelenting. ■ But he met, one day, 
one who appeared out of the bending heavens, and 
told him, " I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest : I 
am the one you are slaying." And the flint all 
melted out of him ; and he became full of the spirit 
of the Lamb of God, and tender-hearted as a child. 
So only God takes your sins away. His promises 
may bribe you into virtue, his punishments may keep 
you from sinning with your hands ; but only through 
the Lamb of God He will take away your sins, melt 
them clean out of you, and make your souls beat 
with the throbbings of his own Divine Humanity. 

Has Christianity come to any of you only as a code 
of rules and regulations, without laving: a warm hand 
upon your spiritual natures to mould them anew ? 
Has sin appeared to you only as an inconvenience, or 
as a violation of social customs and manners ? Has 
the religion of Christ failed to stir your deepest 
affections, and to move you to a consecration to Him, 
fervent and complete ; failed of giving you the sense 
of forgiveness and peace that flows in like a river, 
clear and tranquil ? That must be, and will be, unless 
the doctrine of the Fatherhood is something more 
than an empty platitude, and unless his Christ, as the 
Lamb of God, shall take your sins away. 



THE TRINITY. 



Matthew XXVIII. 19 : " Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptiz- 
ing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." 

1 John, V. 7: "There are three that bear record in heaven: the Father, 
the Word, and the Holy Ghost ; and these three are one." 

THIS text from the first Epistle of John has a 
remarkable history. A very long controversy 
has been held over it ; not merely as to what it 
means, but as to whether it has any rightful place in 
Sacred Scriptures. The final verdict by all parties 
is, that it is a spurious text, since it is not found 
in any of the early manuscripts which have any 
authority. It does not follow, however, that it is a 
forgery ; and it is hard to believe it such. It came 
into the Bible, I suppose, in this way : Some early 
copyist put it in the margin, as a comment, or note 
upon the text, meaning it as a paraphrase and enlarge- 
ment of what the text had only hinted and implied. 
Another copyist came along, and removed it from 
the margin into the text itself, and embodied it there, 
thinking, perhaps, that it belonged there originally, 
and had fallen out, and ought to be restored. And, 



172 THE TRINITY. 



if you read over the whole passage, you will see that 
it does give to the sense a roundness and complete- 
ness which you miss, and see the want of, when it is 
taken away. No doctrine of Christianity is affected 
by it ; for these three terms are found elsewhere, in 
like connection and relation, — Father, Son, and Spirit, 
as expressing the entire nature of the Godhead. I 
regard therefore the text in John as an early gloss 
or commentary, probably suggested by the text in 
Matthew, and serving as an illustration. For, observe 
how beautifully the one illustrates and complements 
the other. Matthew reports Jesus as saying to his 
disciples, " Go and teach all peoples," so I render 
it, " baptizing [i.e., cleansing] them by the power of 
the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. And 
lo, I am with you alway, to the end of time." But 
lest any one should fall into the mistake of thinking 
that these were three persons, or three Gods, the text 
in John says they are three forms of attestation of 
one God : " There are three that bear witness in 
heaven : the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost ; 
and these three are one ; " so giving us the concep- 
tion of the Godhead in his undivided personality. 

But a subject of most profound interest here opens 
upon us. This meaning certainly unfolds itself from 
both passages, that, in order to have any living expe- 
rience of the wealth of the Divine Nature, you must 
know God in a threefold sense. You must know 



THE TRINITY. 173 



Him as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Nay, you have 
no baptism, no unction from Him, no inward cleans- 
ing, — for that is what baptism signifies, — unless 
you know Him in his threefold power as Father, 
Son, and Spirit. How constantly do we find this 
truth brought out all through the New Testament ! 
It is not enough, Christ tells us, to believe in the 
Father. " He that believeth not on the Son shall 
not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." 
Nor yet, again, is this enough. "I will send the Com- 
forter," He says, sometimes rendered Helper. " He 
shall convict, convince, bring all I have spoken to 
your remembrance, take of mine and show it to you, 
and show you things to come." What, then, are these 
three grand essentials of the gospel, without all of 
which our Christian experience is lame, halting, and 
defective, but all of which together reveal the God- 
head in the fulness of his perfections and the riches 
of his grace ? Let us give our attention to them 
severally. 

1. When we speak of God as our Father, we mean 
specially God as the universal, all-begetting, and 
omnipotent Love. It is not by any means a word 
which exhausts the full meaning of Deity, or the full 
power and manifestation of the Godhead. Indeed, 
there is no single term that will do this. " Father- 
hood " is a word borrowed from our human relations, 
which, however, very feebly represent it. It is the all- 



174 THE TRINITY. 



originating Love which not only created us at the 
beginning, but which creates us all the while, and 
which is transfused through all the works of Nature ; 
is within all Nature's laws, and working through them. 
It knows nothing of persons. In good men or bad 
men, it works on just the same. Hence our Saviour's 
language, " Love your enemies, bless them that curse 
you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for 
them that despitefully use you ; that you may be chil- 
dren of your Father which is in heaven : for He 
maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, 
and sendeth his rain on the just and on the unjust" 
Hence, again, He tells the Jews, when they charged 
Him with working miracles on the Sabbath, " My 
Father worketh continuously, and so do I." He 
keeps on Sabbath days just the same. The sun does 
not then stop shining, nor the grass stop growing, 
nor the flowers stop blooming. And you may go out 
under the open heavens, amid the universal tranquil- 
lity. If you do any deed of darkness there, or speak 
out Avords of blasphemy, the sun will not stop shin- 
ing, nor the earth stop blooming, nor the breezes 
stop whispering, nor will any thunderbolt drop down 
upon your head. Say what you will, do what you 
will, the omnipresent Love answers back to you in 
smiles. The Fatherhood of God is that which 
Wordsworth drank in and described : — 



THE TRINITY. 175 



" Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the breathing air, 
And the blue sky. and in the mind of man ; 
A motion and a spirit which impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

Or, as Paul puts it, " It is above all, and through all, 
and in you all ; " and, " all in all." 

And hence the Fatherhood of God is not specially 
a Christian doctrine. Long before Christ came, the 
Greeks called God the universal Father ; and the 
Romans copied them and followed them, for Jupiter 
means God the Father, all-embracing, all-pervading, 
like the ethers which we breathe. No people were 
ever more keenly alive than the Greeks to the omni- 
present Love which originated Nature, and which so 
breathes through it as to make the Cosmos musical 
in its harmonies, and tremulous in its spirit of beauty. 

Well, why is not this enough, and what do we want 
more ? Why, it is enough for a while, and so long as 
the surface of our natures only, and the surface of 
universal nature, has come to our knowledge. But, 
in some hour of self-revelation, the soul within you 
has been stirred to its depths, and cries out for a 
personal communion and a personal love, such as no 
human love can satisfy, and such as nature has not 
given you. You go out and seek for this communion 
with the universal Father. You pray into universal 



176 THE TRINITY. 



space ; and your voice comes back in lonely echoes, or 
in the whispering breeze, which whispers just the 
same whether you pray or not. Or, there is the bur- 
den of sin and guiltiness that lies hard and heavy 
upon the spirit ; you want it rolled off ; and you pray 
to the universal Father to clear it away, and to bring 
into the wounded mind a sense of forgiveness, atone- 
ment, and peace. And still the prayer goes up, and 
comes back in echoes, — 

" I cannot find Thee : still on restless pinion 

My spirit beats the void where Thou dost dwell ; 
I wander lost through all thy vast dominion, 
And shrink beneath thy light ineffable." 

" I cannot find Thee." Or, again, some friend has 
been stricken at your side, — some one whose heart 
was so knit with yours that they both made but one 
heart, — and he passes away from your sight, and dis- 
solves back into universal nature ; and you plant with- 
ering flowers above him, to represent too well the 
human flower that turns to dust below. And you try 
to follow his spirit where it vanished away in the 
dark. You knock at the gates of death ; but they give 
back only a hollow sound. You shout through them 
after your friend ; but there is no answer except your 
own voice coming back again. What, then, do you 
want? What do the heart and mind both cry out 
for? Why, it is the Word, the Word, the Word. 



THE TRINITY. 177 



Not your own word given back to you, not the inar- 
ticulate word of star and breeze, not any man's 
word that is fallible, not a mere voice of com- 
mand as from Sinai. It is the Word begotten of 
the Father, and coming in tones more human and 
determinate than the tones of Nature, more human 
than her breezes or her thunders. It is the Word 
made flesh, fresh out of the bosom of the Godhead, 
clothed in our humanity, and speaking its language, 
and breathing its sympathies, and warm and tender 
with its tones. " No man hath seen God at any 
time : the only begotten Son that dwells in the bosom 
of the Father, He hath brought Him out to view." 
The Word doubtless is in Nature also ; but there it has 
no human tones nor sympathies, and no articulation. 
In the Word made flesh, God is not only humanized 
to our conceptions, but He speaks with us as a man 
talks with his friend. " He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father; and how sayest thou, then, Show 
us the Father ? Believest thou not that I am in the 
Father, and the Father in me ? The words that I speak 
unto you, I speak not of myself; but the Father 
that clwelleth in me, He doeth the works." To the 
question, Where have the loved ones gone ? not only 
comes back an articulate answer, but the bolts and 
bars are broken by Him who went through and shat- 
tered them. Not only so : God Himself, not in mate- 
rial Nature, whose pulses have no blood in them, but 



17.8 THE TRINITY. 



in humanity all divine and lovable, and thrilling 
towards us with tender compassion, and taking up all 
our sufferings as a burden on its own feeling", — all 
this comes in the Word made flesh, appealing to the 
deepest love of the heart, and seeking personal rela- 
tions with every one of us. We appeal from nature 
to the Word, with a new song upon our lips. 

On surface knowledge we have fed, 

And missed the golden grain; 
And now I come to Thee for bread 

To sate this hunger pain. 

No gift I bring, nor knowledge fine, 

Nor trophies of my own : 
I come to lay my heart in Thine, 

O Lamb amid the throne ! 

There is unquestionably a dispensation of law, in 
which we are governed by principles, ideas, and codes 
of morality. And all this we may have with only an 
acknowledgment of the Fatherhood of God. It is a 
dispensation of truth ; and it may have a good deal 
of truth, even all the abstract truths of religion, and 
yet never touch the deep well-springs of human 
nature. Indeed, I do not know that there was any 
abstract religious truth that had not been acknowl- 
edged long before Christ came. The Fatherhood of 
God, immortality as a speculation, retribution, heaven 
and hell, and the whole moral code, were not the 



THE TRINITY. 179 



discoveries of Christianity, but were given in some 
shape by all the great religions of the East. The 
principles of absolute morality are the same, all the 
world over, and all the ages through. But an ab- 
stract code of morals, of doctrine, commands without 
inspiring. Laws may be good and beneficent, yet 
command without inspiring. Natural law is all good ; 
and the naturalist tells us how divine it is working 
around us and through us. I see all this, and 
acknowledge it. I see, too, that the regulations of a 
railroad may be very good and wise and beneficent ; 
and I know very well, that, unless I keep within those 
regulations, I shall very likely be maimed, or crushed 
to death. And I may believe that the railroad 
directors, whom I have never seen, and who hold 
their sessions away off in some committee-room, are 
very wise and good people. And I shall observe the 
regulations in a mechanical jvay, without being 
brought into any relations with the directors, that 
eclify me much, intent only on getting to my journey's 
end. And so it is in our great journey of life, while 
we have only a code of natural and moral laws, whose 
Lawgiver is away out of sight, and keeps this stu- 
pendous mechanism in motion. And we read of a 
man who was rigidly and fiercely conscientious, while 
the truths that ruled him were ideas only, categories 
of the understanding, commandments graven on 
tables of stone, or drawn out in a Levitical code. 



180 THE TRINITY. 



But afterwards the ideas and the categories and the 
commandments were gathered, embodied, and imper- 
sonated in a living Form and the attributes of a 
Divine Person who broke on his sight, and whose 
Divine splendors and heavenly communings melted 
all the iron out of him, and made his heart the well- 
spring of a philanthropy tender as a mother's love. 
It made ail the difference between Saul of Tarsus 
with his hardness of character, and Paul to the Gen- 
tiles with these touches of softness. 

All that the Father hath is thine ; 

Thus does thy Word declare : 
So the full stream of life Divine 

Flows from the Godhead there. 

3. Well, why is not this enough ? Why is not the 
love of Christ all-sufficient, — Christ as the manifesta- 
tion of the Godhead, and a revelation of the Great 
Hereafter ? Because that love may be a sentiment 
only, and it may be nothing but a sentimentality. 
Jesus as a lovely character may be admired and ex- 
tolled as all-Divine ; and yet, if that be all, we only 
admire Him as we do the beautiful nature that smiles 
around us. And bad men have paid their homage 
to both, with heart and character unchanged. " I 
know men," said the first Napoleon ; " and I know 
Christ was something more." But if he did know it, 
that knowledge did not prevent his wading through 



THE TRINITY. 181 



slaughter to a throne. And we may know Christ as 
a model of perfection and of moral beauty; and the 
model may only shine away before us, and above us, 
without meltinsr down our natures and moulding 
them anew. " The Holy Spirit," said. Jesus to his 
disciples, " is with you, and shall be in you." He 
was with them, for they saw the Holy Spirit manifest 
in his person and works ; but as yet He was an out- 
side wonder and mystery, and only when Jesus went 
away, and came again, did they know the nature of 
his kingdom, or even understand his words. When 
there is not only admiration of his character, but 
submission to Him of the will and of the life, with a 
child's obedience and trust, then the Holy Spirit 
comes. It comes as an influx of power, a forthgoing 
energy from God, in his Christ and through Him, 
searching all the man within, making his sins stand 
black in the light, and in awful contrast with the 
Divine Purity and Holiness. The Holy Spirit is not 
a sentiment, but a searcher and refiner, melting the 
heart into penitence first, and then purging its guilt 
away. Not only so. He quickens the whole spiritual 
nature, makes the memory deliver up the dead truths 
that were in it, and makes them alive. He is the 
Comforter ; for through Him comes all the communion 
with Christ that we can ever have. The Second 
Advent people tell us that Christ is coming again in 
person, and that we shall see Him in the flesh very 



THE TRINITY. 



soon. As if that would bring Him any nearer to us 
spiritually, merely looking upon his form, and gazing 
upon his person. Only as He sends the Holy Spirit, 
does He become the Christ of consciousness, con- 
vincing, subduing, purifying, and regenerating, and 
then flooding the soul with his rivers of peace. 

Not all people have this that believe in Christ. 
No ; for they may believe in Him only as a lovely 
model, and admire Him as they admire pictures and 
statues. There is a great deal of this artistic religion, 
which changes one's intellectual tastes without chan- 
ging: the heart, character, and life. Not till the Word 
comes in the voice of command and authority, and 
you fall under it, saying, " Lord, what wilt Thou have 
me to do?" not till then are you in any state to 
receive its influx of power, that explores you, sifts 
your pride and conceit out of you, and creates you 
anew in Christ Jesus. Then the Holy Ghost comes 
in showers of arrowy light, first piercing and wound- 
ing, and then changing to showers of forgiving grace 
and abounding love. Then He comes in power, and 
gives his people pentecostal times. But He strives 
with us all the while. I think all of you must have 
known something of his motions within you. Can 
you not remember an hour when the conscience was 
more tender, or some neglected truth was pricking at 
the core of the heart, or the unrest and dissatisfaction 
with mere selfish and godless living were more intol- 



THE TRINITY. 183 



erable, or when your violations of the law of neigh- 
borly love hindered you from sleep, or when the crav- 
ings of unsatisfied affection made a fearful void in 
the soul, or when vanished smiles and household 
voices hushed in death have made the silence as that 
which follows the toll of bells, tolling through the 
heart forever, or when a coming eternity, coming so 
nigh, has folded you in the shadows which it sends on 
before, and the questions, Whence ? and Whither ? 
have been sharp and urgent ? If you can remember 
such hours as these, then the Spirit has had its striv- 
ings with the conscience. And self -surrender is the 
sole condition of his coming with power, till the 
troubled mind and heart find their eternal peace 
under the brooding wings of the Holy Dove. 

Such is the Christian Trinity, — Father, Son, and 
Spirit, — clear of all husks of theology which we ought 
by this time to have done with, in quest of the golden 
grain which lies within them. And if we are to know 
the Father, not as a speculation, but as a personal 
friend ; if we would know Christ, not as a barren 
sentiment, but as the transforming Word ; if we are to 
know God as a living experience that opens through 
the soul all the riches of his nature, — we must have 
a baptism into the power of the Father, and the Son, 
and the Spirit, — all three; and then the promise of 
Christ will have its blissful fulfilment, " Lo, I am with 



1 84 THE TRINITY. 



you a] way, even unto the end of the world." "If 
any man love me, he will keep my words : and my 
Father will love him, and we will come and make our 
abode with him." 



THE DIVINE FRIENDSHIPS. 



John XL 35,30: "Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how He 

loved him ! " 

TWO ranges of fact appear in the life of Jesus, 
seeming, at first, altogether discrete and sepa- 
rate. One range is called miracle, or wonder. Events 
of this class appear at first like solitary peaks, very 
lofty, and mingling with the sky ; and on them Jesus 
is lifted away from us, away from all our home-life 
and every-day experience. Hence it is the peculiarity 
of one school of criticism to take all this range out 
from the New Testament history, as unreal and un- 
historic, and belonging only to the category of myth 
and fable. The birth of Jesus ; his power over dis- 
eases ; over the elements, such as storms and waves ; 
over the dead, who rise to life again at his word ; 
over the grave itself, which had no power to retain 
Him, — these are taken out as being fabulous and un- 
real, and the additions of a later age. However, as 
these exceptional facts are examined and more famil- 
iarly apprehended, we find they have this most remark- 
able peculiarity ; they cease to be exceptional, or to 



1 86 THE DIVINE FRIENDSHIPS. 

stand forth as isolated history. They are woven in 
with other facts and other history ; with the home- 
life of Palestine, by threads so fine and so tender, 
that, if you take them out, you draw every thing 
along with them, yea, whole tracts and provinces of 
experience which are abloom with the sweetest every- 
day virtues, and filled with the very fragrance of 
social and domestic love ; and you find there is no 
Christ left, and no history left, but in the place 
thereof only a gaping vacuity for the Christian ages 
to date from. When you stand here, and look off 
through a clear atmosphere, you see Wachuset and 
Monadnock, and their brother hills, standing blue 
against the sky. Some child, perhaps, would think 
they are not mountains at all, but only clouds that 
hang in air. But travel on towards them, and you 
pass through green fields, crops of grain, slopes that 
rise in gentle gradation ; the blue tinge fades out, and 
in place thereof there is waving and fluttering foliage ; 
and when you get to the top you cannot tell where 
the mountain began, and where the plain ended, with 
such gentle undulations does it trend off into smaller 
hills, and the smaller hills into the plains and valleys. 
Now, it is just so with those events in the life of 
Jesus which we call his " mighty works." They are 
made up of a great many works, because so much of 
our common life runs into them, and fills them out 
with the sweetness of humanity. He healed the 



THE DIVINE FRIENDSHIPS. 



sick ; but how did He heal them ? Why, by drawing 
them up into the great heart of his love, and thence 
sending thrills of life into them that went down into 
their physical frames, and made even the cripple to 
leap for joy. He raised the dead ; but how did He 
raise them ? Why, by holding the immortal spirit 
within his own Divine sympathies, so that the body, 
which had been the spirit's dwelling-place, found its 
frozen currents to melt and start anew, as the warmed 
and invigorated spirit revived within it. Hence you 
find that it was not power exercised arbitrarily, but 
power threaded with the finest nerves of sensibility ; 
as when we are told He raised the young man, the 
only son of his mother, and she a widow, He helped 
him from the bier, and handed him to his mother, 
making the miracle more significant in the manner 
of it than the mere fact of it, by those Divine cour- 
tesies which were fragrant with his benignity and 
grace. 

There is a notion about the miracles of Christ 
which make them not his works, but arbitrary inter- 
positions of God's power, something adjoined to Him 
as proofs of the truth He was to utter; as if He 
should say, " See ! I am going to announce a great 
truth, and to show you that it comes from God. See 
how I can heal this cripple ; or see how I can still 
the waves ; or see how I can raise this dead man to 
life! Sse howl can do these wonderful things ! Do 



THE DIVINE FRIENDSHIPS. 



you think that God would have given such physical 
power as this to a man whose words were not to be 
credited and received ? " I am afraid there is an old 
Unitarianism which still clings to these mechanical 
theories of the works of Jesus, because afraid to 
acknowledge his essential and intrinsic Divinity. 

We are going to contemplate this morning the 
miracle at Bethany not as a mere manifestation of 
power, but as a revelation of life and character ; 
not as an arbitrary interposition of God, but as 
the natural and spontaneous forthgoing of the mind 
and heart of Jesus. And having contemplated the 
miracle as a revelation of life and character, we will 
then ascend to the grander and more general doc- 
trines of Christianity, which are shadowed forth, from 
the resurrection scene at Bethany, to the general 
resurrection of the last day. 

I. First look at the connections and environments, 
which are a part of the miracle, in fact, and are as 
full of its spirit as they can hold. 

Observe what a whole group of characters stand 
out individualized and photographed in the light of 
this central fact of the raising of Lazarus. There 
are" four persons who specially appear in it with mar- 
vellous distinctness, and so drawn to the life, that we 
know the whole scene must be real. These are Laz- 
arus, the two sisters, and Judas Iscariot. We are 
accustomed so much to speak of the philanthropy of 



THE DIVINE FRIENDSHIPS. 189 

Jesus, of his mission to the race, that I fear we miss 
those interior friendships which give -us the sweetest 
shadings of moral beauty, and the gentlest revealings 
of his Divinity, and so we fail to see what Christianity 
does for the private and personal relations of human 
life. Even the first three evangelists understand this 
very imperfectly ; and not till John comes along, and 
supplements them, do we see Jesus in those Divine 
friendships into whose spirit John so largely entered. 
There was a woman, say Mark and Luke rather awk- 
wardly, who came when Jesus and the twelve were 
reclining at meat, and poured a box of precious oint- 
ment over the head of Jesus ; and the disciples re- 
buked the woman for the needless waste. Open 
John, and compare notes, and you get the real signifi- 
cance of the scene, and the spirit of it. What the 
woman really did, was to lave the brow of the weary 
traveller with spice-waters ; take off the worn sandals 
from the lacerated feet, and bathe them with healing 
oil; and when Judas Iscariot says, "This ought to 
have been sold for so much, and put into the money- 
box," Jesus replies, " Let her alone : are the offices 
of personal affection worth nothing ? I tell you it is 
just such deeds as these — not the splendid donations 
and charities thrown from a distance — that will 
give to my religion its sweetest flavor ; yea, as the 
fragrance of this ointment fills the room, they will 
make Christianity fill the world with its rich and 



190 THE DIVINE FRIENDSHIPS. 

grateful odors." This woman was Mary, — that same 
Mary who belonged to the family group at Bethany ; 
and the story gives us some conception of those per- 
sonal ties whereby Jesus drew all into the great heart 
of his love, and thence sent out from it life-giving 
streams that flowed into the languid currents of dis- 
ease or the frozen channels of death, and made them 
start anew. In what love-lisrht do the sisters and the 
brother stand out before us ! And so we come to the 
resurrection scene prepared to understand the nature 
of it. 

Bear in mind that Jesus, though twenty-five miles 
away, had held the dying man to Himself, knew the 
whole progress of the disease, through the sympathies 
of his nature that divined the whole. So He says, 
" Lazarus has gone to sleep, and I am going to wake 
him up." The scene at the tomb we are hardly let 
into by the common rendering. " He groaned in 
spirit," the translators, say; rather it is, He strug- 
gled with Himself, — He choked down his emotions ; 
and then, with a great voice, He says, "Lazarus, 
come forth /" great, that is, not in its loudness, but 
in its volume, because of the fulness of the love that 
rolled through it, and found its response in the spirit 
of Lazarus muffled there in death-robes, and called 
back to conscious life. How vividly does this scene 
let us into that province of life where Christianity has 
its special application, and from which, sometimes, it 



THE DIVINE FRIENDSHIPS. 191 

is pushed clean out ! There is such a thing as philan- 
thropy so universal, that it knows nothing of the 
fine tendrils of personal affection ; benevolence so 
mighty large, that the friendships of life have no 
place in it, to keep it sweet and warm ; reformers so 
bent on saving whole races of men, as to become 
sour and hard towards the individuals that nestle 
close beside them. Here is a man who felt the salva- 
tion of a world lying hard upon him, whose private 
friendship had such fervency that the dead came to 
life in the sphere of it ; and its perfume has come 
down the ages as the fragrance of an everlasting rose. 
Talk about a miracle ! Why, a miracle is only the 
central fact of a whole congeries, all depending on it. 
It is power made searching and pervading and all- 
knowing, through the sympathies of the heart. The 
central fact and the whole beautiful environment de- 
pend each on the other, with tjie veins of truth run- 
ning through them alike ; just as the earth and the 
rocks, which are the frame-work of the mountain, 
are one with the verdure that clothes it, or the 
flowers that crop out from it and festoon its sides. 

But we ascend from this exposition to the grand 
doctrines of Christianity. These resurrection scenes, 
in which Jesus appears as the central figure, are 
types and representations of the final resurrection 
itself. " If I be lifted up," said he, " I will draw all 
men unto me," — mark the language, I will draw 



192 THE DIVINE FRIENDSHIPS. 

them. " This is the will of Him that sent me, that 
every one who seeth the Son, and believeth in Hirn, 
may have everlasting life : and I will raise him up at 
the last day." " I am the Resurrection and the Life : 
and he that believeth in me, though he were dead, 
yet shall he live." Sinking the spirit in the letter, 
the theologians have transferred the final resurrection 
scene to the cemeteries. I do not see why ; for sup- 
pose these same bodies are to rise again, they are not 
in the graveyards; — they have gone into the endless 
circulations of nature, have been drawn up, and 
turned into leaf and flower and forest. And why 
should not the resurrection be in groves and gar- 
dens, rather than among the tombs ? But suppose 
such a scene were possible, what would it be ? Sup- 
pose Jesus were to come into the churchyards to 
receive the dead, what would be the nature of the 
resurrection scene ? Why, it would not be the Son 
of man descending in flaming fire. It would be the 
resurrection scene at Nain or at Bethany over again, 
extended and enlarged, but the same benignant Form 
in the midst of it ; and his Spirit pervading the whole. 
It would not be an arbitrary power over dead bodies, 
but the power of spirit over spirit, and over matter 
made quick by its power and by its ail-healing and 
searching sympathies. The child would be raised up 
and handed to the mother, the brother to the sister, 
the friend to the friend long separated, with, " Loose 



THE DIVINE FRIENDSHIPS. 193 

him, and let him go home to his own." That would be 
Nain and Bethany over again. And what scenes in 
all the burial places ! What groupings of old friends 
revived, of families coming together, whose dust had 
been scattered abroad ! What home centres forming 
themselves anew, circle within circle, as over all the 
earth, each one rose and came to his own, as doves 
that fly to their windows ! But the scene, which the 
theologians have imagined as here on earth and in 
the cemeteries, is beyond the cemeteries, not among 
dead bodies, but among living souls who have put 
on immortality. 

" The dear departed that have passed away 

To the still house of death, leaving their own, — 
The gray-haired sire that died in blessing thee, 
Mother or sweet-lipped babe, or she who gave 
Thy home the light and bloom of Paradise, — 
They -shall be thine again, when thou shalt pass 
By God's appointment through the shadowy vale, 
To reach the sunlight of the immortal hills." 

" I am the resurrection and the life," means plainly, 
"Mine is the power over kindred spirits to draw 
them up to me, by the attractions of a friendship 
which is the mightiest power in the universe." 

You whose hearts are the hardest would melt into 
penitence, if once drawn into the sphere of a friend- 
ship like his. It is not less mighty now than it was 
here on the earth; not less mighty now that the 



194 THE DIVINE FRIENDSHIPS. 

Son of man is lifted up, and become the Lamb in the 
midst of the throne, who leads his own in green pas- 
tures and beside fountains of living water. And 
those who have gone down in sin and unbelief may 
look up from their sepulchres, may still hear his 
" Come forth;" " Loose him, and let him go;" for 
there was that other Mary, who had gone down into 
a worse sepulchre than that of Lazarus. But, — 

" In the sky after tempest as shineth the bow, 
In the glance of the sunbeam as melteth the snow, 
He looked on the lost one, her sins were forgiven ; 
And Mary went forth in the beauty of heaven. 1 ' 



ENCOURAGEMENTS. 1 



Hebrews XII. i: "Seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud 
of witnesses, let us renounce every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset 
us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us." 

WE hear and read a great deal about the trials 
and the difficulties of the Christian life ; and, 
if we were confined to this line of thought, we should 
get .the impression that the way to heaven was a very 
rugged and thorny one, and that it was very hard 
work to be a Christian ; and we might imagine that 
there was truth in the idea which some have, that, if 
you decline to take the Christian name and confes- 
sion, you will have indulgences and pleasures, and a 
sort of freedom which Christians must renounce, and 
a right to some practices of doubtful morality, without 
being criticised. I propose to speak this morning of 
the encouragements and incitements of the Christian 
course; and we begin with this figure of the writer to 
the Hebrews, which represents it. It is drawn from 

1 The manuscript of this sermon bears the date of October, 1874 ; and it is 
believed to be the last sermon written and preached by Mr. Sears. The short 
and incomplete sermon printed with the memorial discourse of Dr. Chandler 
Robbins was never delivered by its author. 



1 9 6 ENCO URA GEMEN TS. 

the Greek stadium, or race-course, where the select- 
est portion of all Greece assembled once in four 
years, and where picked men of the most perfect 
physical development tried their skill in running for 
the prize. They trained themselves for the contest. 
They laid aside every weight ; that is to say, any gar- 
ments that cumbered the most swift and easy motion. 
Long rows of spectators lined the stadium on either 
side, and clapped their hands in acclamation for their 
favorite hero, when he left others behind him in the 
race. Even so, — this is the doctrine of the text, — our 
life here on the earth is a race-course. Birth is the 
starting-place, and death is the goal; and just beyond 
sits the judge who awards the prize of victory; and 
the spectators are the innumerable company who have 
passed into the heavens, but who bend over us and 
around us, to cheer us on to victory. The apostle has 
just enumerated a long train of martyrs, at the head 
of whom is Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant. 
So august is the humblest Christian life, and so great 
the prize it wins, that its success sends thrills of accla- 
mation into the heavens themselves. Dropping the 
figure, and coming to the thought that is under it, — 
a Christian course has incitements and encourage- 
ments which belong to none other ; and now let us 
see what they are. 

The grand distinction between a life heartily and 
confessedly Christian, and one which is not, I take to 



ENCOURAGEMENTS. 197 

be this : that the Christian course has its crosses and 
hardships and trials, so far as they are peculiar to it, 
at the beginning, and they grow less and less till 
they disappear. A wordly life, clearly pronounced 
such, has its crosses and hardships afterwards. They 
are cumulative, and grow heavier to the last. The 
Christian, like Bunyan's pilgrim, finds his load grow- 
ing lighter, till it falls off. The worldling finds his 
load grow heavier, till it weighs him down, and he falls 
under it at the last. It is like the two travellers 
crossing the Alps from opposite sides. The one 
who starts in the Tuscan vales goes at first through 
scenery that charms the senses, and under skies of 
unparalleled softness. All is delightful for a while. 
But he creeps along the sunny side of the Alps, and 
the air becomes cold, and the scenery grows barren. 
He comes to the region of eternal snow, passes 
over the summit on the cokl northern side : the 
Italian scenery vanishes from sight. He descends 
without a guide, wanders through drifts, gets chilled, 
and finally drops, frozen and dead, into the chasm be- 
low. So ends his journey. 

The other traveller starts fresh and vigorous on 
the Switzer side, gets to the summit through toil and 
difficulty, sees new prospects breaking upon him 
every hour, passes over to the southern side, where 
the air grows balmier, and the fields grow greener, 
and finally comes to the region of Tuscan beauty, 



1 98 ENCO URA GEMENTS. 

where nature has lavished all her charms. So ends 
his journey. And this is the Christian life. It does 
begin with self-renunciations and self-denials ; and 
these undoubtedly put crosses and restraints on the 
lusts and passions of the carnal mind, It does begin 
with giving up self ; and this is always hard at first, 
when it is hearty and complete. It does begin with 
actual duties and endeavors, which cross our indo- 
lence, and love of ease. It does require of us some- 
times to stand up for truths which are not popular, 
and which are even trampled under the feet of the 
crowds. It does require at first self-watch and self- 
analysis, and a surrender to the voice of God within, 
kept clear and audible above all the blandishments 
of the world, and the noise of the street. It does 
require of us to climb, and not to drift. It does re- 
quire of us to gird up all the loins of the mind, and 
put all its muscles on the strain, to acquire an indi- 
vidual faith which is clear and sufficing, and not a 
dead tradition of the elders. It does require habits 
to be formed, — habits of thinking, and habits of 
praying, and habits of doing. But all this done, 
habits become a second nature ; and the Christian 
life becomes not an effort and a self-denial, but a 
spontaneous and eternal joy; and the hills of diffi- 
culty smooth out into prospects green and sunny as 
Tuscan vineyards. 

Illustrate this in another way. A Christian life, 



ENCO URA G ERIE NTS. 1 99 

heartily consecrated, reproduces itself in others. 
Take the family relation as an illustration of this. 
Every family has a sort of unity. As is the head of 
the family, so will be the spirit that fills the house, 
and whose silent, pervasive influence impresses and 
educates all the young life that is in it. It is very 
seldom that those who grow up in a Christian home, 
and go out from it, fall into any of the incurable sins 
and depravities. The Holy Spirit loves most to oper- 
ate through the church in the house, and mould all 
its young life. And so the Christian man sees his 
own spirit reflected back more and more from those 
who are near about him. The vice and the filial 
ingratitude which sometimes imbitter the peace of 
the household, are generally kept away from the 
faithful Christian home, where the children have been 
educated for the skies. So that here again the bless- 
ings of a Christian course # are cumulative. The 
Christian lives more and more in others the longer 
he lives ; and his path of blessing broadens and 
brightens to the close. Not so of the life unconsecrat- 
ed. Not so of a life merely negative and worldly. Not 
so of mere negative virtues. They have no warmth 
and piety in them ; and they are not creative, in the 
family or out of it, of the Christian virtues and graces 
which come back in blessings along the good man's 
path, which, the longer he lives even in this world, 
brightens towards the perfect day. Illustrate in 



2 o o E2VC0 URA GEMENTS. 

another way. The perfect Christian assurance, only 
comes through Christian living. There is an assur- 
ance of immortality, and of its peace and commu- 
nion, not less perfect and secure than the assurance 
of the scientist pertaining to the facts of nature. 
But this does not come of itself. Its evidences are 
cumulative, beginning with those that are external 
and historical, but supplemented all the while with 
those that are inward and spiritual ; so that the Chris- 
tian man, as he passes through the probation of this 
world, comes all the while into the clearer and warm- 
er sunshine of a higher one ; and this heavy burden 
of doubt, doubt, grows lighter till it disappears alto- 
gether. And then the shadow of death no longer lies 
upon his path ; and all the burdens of life become 
light as summer air. For in the assurance and fore- 
taste of the life everlasting, what is this little span 
of life, with all its burdens and cares, and all its 
short-lived pleasures and satisfactions ? Now we can 
demonstrate intellectually, by syllogistic reasoning, 
by historical evidence, that there is a God and a 
Christ, and a spiritual world ; and while a man is 
working out the problem, his understanding will see 
that the balance is on the positive side. But his con- 
clusions will not stay with him ; and when he goes 
about his business, it will all look like a beautiful dream, 
transcendent and unreal. So it has always been. The 
man of the world begins with a child's faith in God, in 



EN CO URA GEMENTS. 2 o 1 

prayer, in immortality. But this is traditional and imi- 
tative. He may confirm it afterwards, intellectually, 
by reading books, or by thinking out his syllogisms. 
But the assurance grows less and less, till finally the 
balance comes down heavy on the negative side ; and, 
as life progresses, the gathering darkness grows heavier 
and thicker, and sometimes ends in total night. Mr. 
Hume was a man of pure moral life and serene tem- 
per. He began with the child's trust, and ended in 
the philosopher's doubt of every thing. And there 
is one passage in his writings, of terrible import ; 
so terrible, that his publishers struck it out of the 
later editions. " 1 am appalled," he says, "at the for- 
lorn solitude in which I am placed by my philosophy; 
and I begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable 
condition imaginable, environed in the deepest dark- 
ness." So it is that the non-Christian life courses 
through the evening twilight to the perfect night. So 
it is that the Christian life courses through the morn- 
ing twi.ight to the perfect day. For the doctrines of 
Christianity ripen to a perfect assurance, by a full 
confession and practice, by working with the Christ, 
and doing his will, until, through a personal relation, 
the eternal life is already realized. And these are 
the incitements and encouragements to the Christian 
life. But I do not mean the Christian life merely 
formal, but one which consecrates all our powers of 
thinking, feeling, doing; and in such wise that we 



202 ENCO URA GEM EN TS. 

are willing to lose ourselves in the Christ, and the 
work which He does here on the earth. If you 
started on the Switzer side, struggling with self, and 
wrestling with temptation, climbing sometimes up 
hills of ice, you are sure to gain the summits where 
the Divine scenery lies soft and sweet upon the soul. 
And this is what the apostle calls prayer without 
ceasing. It is when the stages of doubt and denial 
and temptation and conflict have all been passed and 
done with, when evil within and without has been 
resisted and cleared away, and the peace of the 
Divine reconciliation is perennial, and we know God, 
not through blind, traditionary belief, but through a 
living experience ; and then we join hands with the 
elders before the throne, and the sons of God shout- 
ing for joy. 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN 



THE SAXON. AND THE NORMAN. 



THE pride of ancestry is a sentiment which it is 
quite safe, within certain limits, to indulge. 
-Going back two or three hundred years, you get the 
history of a class of men who founded churches, 
states, and empires, and from whom modern civiliza- 
tion borrows almost all its glories. From such men 
we have descended; and to them most of us, if we 
take the trouble, can trace a direct and unbroken 
lineage. Even the humblest individuals, who sup- 
posed themselves to be nobodies, will probably find, 
if they go back far enough, thafr their line in some of 
its crossings and counter-crossings runs into that 
of Howards, Tudors, Stuarts, and Plantagenets ; and 
that the gnarliest fruit that hangs on the most scrag- 
ged stem of their family-tree has some juices in it 
which coursed their way through noble branches or 
from a noble trunk. It will not do, however, to run 
this up too far. These same lords, prelates, and 
governors had their ancestors too ; and when you 
come there, if you wish to keep your family pride 
intact, the best motto on your escutcheon would 



206 THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 

be, " Oh no, we never mention them ! " Through 
these same nobles and earls, you descended from 
some sea-pirate or Highland robber; and if he was 
not hung, the only reason was, that there were not 
honest people enough to give him his deserts. Such, 
if you go far enough back, were your ancestors and 
mine, — grim-looking bandits, lurking in the Cimbric 
forests, living on plunder, eating horse-flesh raw, and 
quaffing libations from human skulls. Those of us 
at the present day who doubt whether the African, 
can be developed into any thing respectable, may 
well look here, and see out of what they themselves 
have developed. 

This pride of ancestry, however, though liable to 
its rebuffs and mortifications, may be turned to uses 
exceedingly valuable, by giving us a living interest in 
the past. No one knows himself very thoroughly till 
he sees the stock out of which he sprung. The in- 
born tastes and proclivities of ancestry course their 
way downward through all the generations. We 
vainly suppose that culture and civilization can 
eradicate them. The innate life of a stock or race 
of men is as sure to re-appear five, or even ten gener- 
ations afterwards, as in the one that immediately fol- 
lows. It is the sap that never loses its flavor, but 
which enters into the leaves and blossoms of a 
remote posterity. Those who have the pictures of 
ancestry hanging on their walls, sometimes observe 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 207 

that the likeness between father and child is not so 
striking as it is between the child and some ances- 
tral face that looks out from a hoar antiquity three 
hundred years ago. Hence the study of races not 
only gives you the clew for understanding the de- 
velopments of all history, but for understanding 
yourself, — of tracing the motions of that blood that 
lifts the valves of your own heart, and makes its cur- 
rents thrill along all your veins and arteries. 

It is sometimes assumed by writers who speak 
rather loosely, that our civilization is Anglo-Saxon. 
That is one element ; but it was not until very recently 
the ruling element in the institutions of the United 
States. There are four, — the Anglo-Norman, the 
Anglo-Saxon, the Celtic, and the African. The Celtic 
and the African, however, are inferior elements, and 
under the control of the other two. The Norman 
and the Saxon struggle for supremacy : the former 
is more fierce and imperious, and, until quite recently, 
held the ascendant. New England, with the places 
it has colonized, is purely Saxon ; but, if you go 
South, the style of government, civilization, manners, 
social and moral culture, is almost as purely Norman ; 
and the conflict between these two, or between the 
ideas which they represent, is the prolonged strife of 
one thousand years. In fact, English history is little 
else than a record of this conflict ; and rightly to 
discern these two elements, is to get the clew for 



2o8 THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 

understanding the strifes, mutations, and prospects 
of the modern civilized world. 

It has been charged against the Lyceum, that it 
demands what is flashy, superficial, and ludicrous ; 
and that one must not import into a popular lecture 
solid matter and useful information. But I shall 
venture on the experiment ; and I hope I do not com- 
pliment your good sense too much, when I ask your 
attention, through about half an hour of my lecture, 
to some groupings of facts, without which no one can 
understand the philosophy of English and American 
history. Some of these groupings do not lie within 
the range of common reading, are not to be found in 
any English books ; but their importance is such, 
that I promise your attention shall be fully rewarded. 

The origin of the Saxon, the fountain of that 
blood that flows through the veins of New England, 
and beats through all your hearts to-night, will first 
claim a moment's attention. It is telling us very 
little, to say that our ancestors came from England. 
England is composed of three races, which have never 
yet mixed their blood together so as to efface the 
first lines of demarcation. Society in England is 
made up of three layers, piled one above another, each 
marking an epoch as distinctly as the rock strata 
mark each a geological era. Of these three layers, 
the ancient Briton, or Celtic, lies at the bottom, and 
makes the lowest class of English population. The 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 209 

Celts are found throughout England, but they abound 
most in the western part, — in Cornwall, in Wales, 
and in Yorkshire ; and hence the peculiar dialect of 
those people. Above the native Briton, is the Saxon, 
making up the middle class of the people of England, 
— its mechanics, its smaller landed proprietors, its 
untitled common people, now pressing upward, and 
becoming largely represented in the House of Com- 
mons. These middle classes belong almost universally 
to the dissenting churches. Puritanism came from 
this rank, and settled New England. This class is 
Saxon through and through, and imbues the English 
mind with its most distinctive life, and tones it with 
its broad and clear common sense. Above this, and 
making the topmost layer, is the aristocracy of Eng- 
land, — its king, its nobility, its titled gentry, and its 
House of Lords. These are purely Norman, or nearly 
so, — a people very different in origin, characteristics, 
manners, customs, temperament, and religion. From 
this class our Southern States were first colonized. 
These are not dissenters, but almost uniformly Church 
of England men. And the conflicts in Church and 
State have been, to a very great extent, the contest 
of race with race, or the Saxon against the Norman. 
What they call the Great Rebellion, when the Parlia- 
ment rose against the lords, and beheaded the king, 
and put Cromwell in his place, was simply the Saxon 
layer upheaving the Norman, and for a while getting 



2io THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 

topmost, but only to subside again. The conflict 
between prelacy and Puritanism, prolonged now as 
the contest between High Churchism and Dissent, 
is mainly Anglo-Saxon life impinging against Anglo- 
Norman. And the conflict of our day, between 
Southern chivalry, so called, and Northern institu- 
tions and ideas, or, more properly, Feudalism against 
Abolitionism, is the same thing over again, — the 
Cavalier pitted against the Roundhead, or the Norman 
against the Saxon. I do not say that no other 
elements enter into these antagonisms, for there are 
many others. I say such is their origin ; and hence 
their peculiar style and tone ; and, without this fact, 
you lack the key to all modern history, and cannot 
understand the nature, or calculate the issue, of this 
conflict of ages. 

Having said enough, as I think, to vindicate the 
importance of my theme, and to show its bearings, 
let me now go back and lift the veil, and show you 
the Saxon and the Norman in their native groves, 
and before the former was developed into the Yankee, 
and the latter into the Cavalier. We shall see how 
each compares with the other, and how each bears 
onward the original proclivities of the stock out of 
which he comes. 

Cast your eye upon the map of Northern Europe, 
and search out the peninsula of Jutland, comprising 
now the kingdom of Denmark. In the neck of that 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN 211 

peninsula was the land of the Saxons at the time 
when they first emerge clearly into the light of history. 
They occupied a territory of about seventy miles in 
length, and half as many in breadth, stretching 
along the western shore of the neck of the penin- 
sula. This little strip of land, with three desolate 
islands off the coast, seems to have been their whole 
territory from the first to the sixth century. It was 
less by one half than the territory of Massachu- 
setts, and was a region of sterility and desolation. 
The strip along the shore was made up of sandy 
downs and slimy marshes, which the sea always 
threatened to invade, and over which the northern 
winds shrieked with maniac fury. Farther inland 
was a range of hills covered with forests, whose roar, 
in the winter blast, answered to the roar of the 
sea. On these barren islands, and in those gloomy 
forests, the Saxon worshipped his grim idols, some- 
times with the horrid rite of human sacrifice. There 
he built rude temples and habitations ; there, before 
his bloody altars, he used the skulls of his enemies as 
his drinking-goblets, and poured out libations to Odin, 
the All-Father. All the days of the week he named 
from his gods ; and we retain the names yet. Sunday 
is the sun's day ; Monday, the moon's day ; Wednes- 
day is Woden's day, and so on. From these desolate 
abodes he issued forth to ravage and plunder ; and in 
all the southern countries the word Saxon was syn- 



212 THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 

onymous with pirate. His name was a terror over all 
the seas and rivers of the Roman empire, and where- 
ever there was a stream deep enough for his boat to 
make its way. The more enemies he killed, the more 
pleased, as he thought, were his gods ; and more 
surely, after death, would he be received into the 
Valhalla, or the Hall of Odin. His form was noble ; 
his eyes blue ; his cheeks fair and florid ; his hair 
was carefully cultivated, and rolled over his shoulders; 
and a special law was enacted which made it penal 
to pull the hair of a Saxon. The Romans were 
astonished at finding so much savage ferocitv under 
such comely exterior.' But his character/ even* in this 
savage state, had two redeeming traits, the pledges of 
all his future greatness and glory. One was his in- 
domitable perseverance and energy. The other was 
his estimate of woman, contrasting most admirably 
with that of the southern and eastern nations, — all 
of them enervated by lust or polygamy, and gone 
down in its pollutions. The Saxon regarded woman 
as nearest to the Divinity, and made her the priestess 
of his groves. Woman's virtue was held as Divinity, 
sacred; and woman's purit)Mvas kept whiter than the 
snows of the northern mountains. If she lost this, 
she was hunted to death by her own sex with savage 
ferocity. Here, in fact, was the parent of all his 
future virtues ; and hence it was that the Saxon stock 
mantled with health and teeming vigor, while the 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN 213 

southern nations were stricken with impotence and 
decay. Even the names of the women were musical 
in sound, and beautiful in their' significance. We 
find Edith, the blessed gift ; Beage, the bracelet ; 
Adelave, the noble wife ; Heaberge, tall as a castle ; 
Wynfreda, the peace of man ; EtheTnild, the noble 
war-goddess ; Dudda, the family stem ; Golde, the 
golden ; Deorswythe, very dear ; Deorwyn, the pre- 
cious joy. 

On those barren islands, what would be the first 
want of the Saxon ? Precisely what it has always 
been, ladies and gentlemen, — his neighbor's land. 
About the year 600 he began to go west, — the ever- 
lasting propensity of the Yankee. Casting his eye 
over the narrow sea, into the fertile vales and the 
gentle slopes of Britain, he thought it a better coun- 
try than his own. He emigrated, — and for the same 
reason that a Yankee always emigrates, — for better 
farms. He overran the island; subdued the native 
Briton, whom he regarded much as we do the native 
savage of America ; drove him into the west of 
England, or over into Ireland ; took possession of his 
country ; became Christianized, or at least thought he 
did ; and established that state of society whence to 
this day we derive our maxims of household economy 
and social justice. The right of woman to hold prop- 
erty, her right to attend' the Gemot, or assembly of 
the people, the right of the widow to her dower, — 



214 THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN 

these were pure Anglo-Saxon ordinances, at a time 
when woman in Southern and Oriental nations was 
degraded into a slave and a thing. The trial by jury, 
the equal right of inheritance among the children, the 
Gemot, or assembly of the people, answering to our 
town-meetings and general court, were composed of 
both sexes, were Ansrlo- Saxon institutions, and be- 
came the imperishable germs of representative gov- 
ernment and republican liberty for all ages. Thus 
the Saxon subdued the Briton or Celt, and estab- 
lished his ordinances in England ; and hence the first 
and second layers of English life and society, — the 
Briton or Celt at the bottom, and the Saxon top of 
him. 

The Saxon was to be subdued in turn, and another 
layer was to be formed above him. 

The story of the Anglo-Saxon has been told with 
tolerable fulness by Sharon Turner. But I do not 
know of any English history that tells us much about 
the Norman, which gives us an adequate conception 
of his origin, his character, and his doings, or which 
does him full justice as an element in English civili- 
zation. And yet we owe to him, in the main, that 
which flings brilliancy over the English name and 
annals, that which has given to English art its gor- 
geousness and grandeur, which has inspired English 
literature and eloquence with its highest fervor, which 
has fired the English imagination with Orient splen- 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN 215 

dor, which woke in the Middle Ages the spirit of chiv- 
alry and that spirit of old romance which threw the 
charms of poesy over all the dusty ways of life. 
The Saxon was intensely practical : his love was for 
houses and lands, and oxen and sheep and hogs ; and 
his wit was quick at invention in all things pertain- 
ing to the arts of husbandry. The Norman con- 
trived to get all these out of his serfs and slaves, 
while he listened to the songs and harpings of his 
skalds and the stories of his saga-men, and cheated 
life out of its meanness by living in a world of his 
own magical creations. 

Cast your eye again over the map, and trace the 
limits of ancient Scandinavia, constituting that vast 
northern peninsula since known as Norway and 
Sweden. That was the land of the Norman when we 
first get a clear view of him ; that is, from the first to 
the tenth century. His principal stronghold was the 
coast of Norway. You are aware that the Scandina- 
vian mountains run nearly the whole length parallel 
to the coast, their sides covered with lofty pines, their 
tops gleaming with everlasting snows. The shore is 
thickly indented with bays and inlets, and off the 
coast a long row of islands 'stretches away to the 
polar sea. Between these islands and the coast, the 
sea is sucked in fearful eddies and whirlpools, and 
always makes what Byron calls a hell of waters. This 
region of cold is not without its charms and its ro- 



216 THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 

mance. In the long winter nights the northern 
aurora streams to the stars, and turns midnight into 
day. This aurora is characterized by Humboldt as 
the " electric torrents " which always fill the sky over- 
head with an ocean of surging fire. Summer, though 
short, comes on without any spring, breaking in full 
splendor from the bosom of winter, when all things 
storm into life at once, — to-day a field of snow, to- 
morrow a carpet of living green. 

Norway was divided into twelve little kingdoms, 
each governed by a jarl, or petty sovereign. There 
were two classes of population, — those who lived 
by land, and those who lived by sea ; and hence two 
classes of sovereigns, — land-kings and sea-kings. 
Under the land-kings were landed proprietors, who 
were a sort of nobility ; and under these were serfs, 
or slaves, who were attached to the soil, and did all 
its drudgery, — a state of things very much like that 
lately existing in the Southern States, or the West 
India islands. The sea-kings lived upon the sea, 
and lived by piracy and plunder : they never left the 
ocean, but always kept in their boats, bending to 
their oars amid the whirlpools, with gleams of auroral 
light playing around their icy forms, and glaring 
down the hell of waters into which they plunged ; 
and it was their boast that they never sought shelter 
under a roof, and never drained their drinking-horns 
at a cottage fire. You may well imagine that this 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN 217 

mode of life did not make them effeminate. The sea- 
rovers struck out into the broad ocean, five hundred 
years before Columbus was born, and as early, as the 
ninth century discovered Iceland and Greenland, and 
explored the coast of North America and New Eng- 
land, as far as Cape Cod. Attached to each of these 
land-kings and sea-kings was a skald, or poet-minstrel, 
who always attended the king in battle, that he might 
know how to describe it, and magnify the praises of 
his master. In the Ions; winter nisrhts, and under 
the auroral sky, the skalds and the saga-men would 
shorten the hours with lofty-sounding epics and war- 
songs, and with the long story of the past ; so that 
the Northern land had a rich treasury of song and 
history handed down by tradition, a great while 
before a written literature had any existence there. 
Depping tells us many curious and marvellous 
tales about a class of men among these Normans, 
whose race has not yet become extinct. Every king- 
had a set of persons about him called champions, 
whose function was to swell, bluster, pick quarrels, 
fight duels, and guard the king's person in war. 
Sometimes these Orlandos would get wrought up 
to such a pitch of frenzy, that they would attack 
trees and rocks with the same indomitable bravery 
with which Don Quixote assailed the windmills. 
Depping tells us, too, that in these fits of frenzy they 
would eat fire, suggesting to us the origin of the fire- 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 



eaters of the present day. He tells us of two of 
these champions who once met in single combat, 
and fought till each killed the other ; and even then 
their chivalry was not satisfied, for, tradition says, 
they fought long after they were dead. 

Among their maxims of bravery were such as 
these, — never seek shelter during a tempest ; never 
stop to dress your wounds during battle; never shed 
tears for the death of friends ; and, when your last 
hour comes, be sure to die laughing. Mercy was 
regarded as a crime : the more blood a man had 
shed, the more magnificent his reception in the Hall 
of Odin. 

We are curious to know what sort of women gave 
birth to such sons as these, and whether they must 
not have rocked their babies upon the tree-top, with 
the northern blast for a lullaby. Depping enlightens 
us a little on this point, telling us what sort of women 
they were, and by what courtship they were won. 
They, too, became sea-rovers and champions when 
they took the name of Virgins of the Shield. The 
more lovers a Norman maid was able to kill off in 
single combat, the more highly esteemed was she for 
her accomplishments and charms. We have a curi- 
ous story of one of these accomplished maidens, a 
champion and a sea-rover. A suitor, more brave 
than the rest, chased her into the bay of Finland, 
boarded her skiff, met her in desperate combat, cleft 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 219 

her helmet in two, when she gave over, and con- 
sidered herself fairly wooed and won ; and the histo- 
rian adds, that the conjugal felicity and endearment 
were more perfect and secure after a courtship like 
this, in which the highest virtues of both parties had 
been evolved. 

Not far from the year 900, a revolution took place 
in the affairs of Norway, from which very important 
consequences followed,. and are following still. About 
that time Harald (surnamed of the beautiful hair), 
one of the twelve kings of Norway, subdued all the 
rest in succession, and united the whole country 
under a single monarchy. He made the Scandina- 
vian mountains his beacon summits ; and if an enemy 
approached by sea, the nearest peak flamed with light, 
and flung the signal on to the next, till the whole 
train was ablaze from the Naze to the North Cape, 
and summoned every jar! to the defence of the coun- 
try. Some of the jarls could not endure the tyranny 
of Harald, and sought refuge in other lands. Iceland 
■ was now colonized, and soon after Christianized, and 
became the seat of learning and civilization at a time 
when all Europe lay in darkness. It gave birth to a 
literature that still exists in the Icelandic, or native 
Norman language, and which, Prof. Rask of Stock- 
holm says, rivals in copiousness, flexibility, and 
energy, every modern tongue. 

But the most important event of this revolution in 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN 



Norway was the settlement of Normandy, in France. 
Rollo, a famous sea-king and pirate, was banished 
from Norway by Harald. He and his fire-eaters, the 
champions, took to their ships, and, scudding over the 
German sea, came down to the mouth of the Seine. 
There lay the province of Neustria, the most fair and 
goodly portion of all France, where the sunlight lay 
warm upon the fields, and the grapes hung luscious 
upon the vines. The French monarchy had become 
weak through internal dissensions and disorders ; and 
so Rollo and his companions seized upon the tempt- 
ing prize. This Rollo was a worthy descendant of 
the fire-eaters. He was surnarned The Walker, be- 
cause such was his enormous stature, that every 
horse he mounted broke down under him, and he was 
obliged to travel upon his feet. They adopted the 
laws, the language, and the religion, of the conquered 
province ; and the fierce sea-king and his fire-eaters 
became the cavaliers of Normandy, with their vassals 
and serfs from among the conquered people. At 
this time the language spoken in France was the old 
Latin, in its state of transition to modern French. 
In Northern France it was still barbarous, and was 
without a literature. The Norman adopted it as his 
own ; and it soon sparkled with the brilliancy of 
Norman imagination, and discoursed liquid music in 
verse and prose. It became the language of romance ; 
and the cavalier recounted in it his own deeds of 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN 221 

chivalry, and the minstrel sang in it of his lady-love. 
The skald, who had thundered his war-odes under the 
ruddy flames of the northern aurora, now sang under 
the suns of France, his fancy still burning and spark- 
ling with its ancient fire. The descendants of Rollo 
and his champions in Normandy, somewhat civilized 
by Christianity, became the people whence the 
brightest glories of chivalry took their rise. The 
Norman, too, had his reverence for woman ; but in 
its development and culture it became very different 
from that of the Saxon. 

The Norman worshipped her because she was a 
fair lady, with her slaves waiting around her ; and 
then, when Giant Grim came to carry her off, it was 
glorious to defend her, and cleave the heads of forty 
giants and Saracens in the fray. The Saxon's ideal 
of woman culminated in the mother and the wife, 
who spread the charms of home around his fireside. 
That of the Norman culminated in my lady cf Castle 
Hall, for one twinkle of whose eye seven knights 
had tilted seven days, and broke their heads in the 
tournament. " Her highest function," said the Nor- 
man, "is to award the prize, amid cloven mail and 
shivered lances." " She is in her glory," said the 
Saxon, " when at evening she welcomes me home 
from toil, her cheeks made ruddy by the blaze 
of the cottage fire." The first romances and tra- 
gedies were written by the Normans in Normandy; 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 



and the most splendid works of the literature 
of Southern Europe were produced on the models 
which they had originated, The Sacred Tragedies 
— including the passion play — had their spirit first 
awakened by the minstrels who sung in the courts 
of Normandy. The most splendid style of modern 
architecture is traceable to the same origin. The 
Norman love of magnificence originated the Gothic 
cathedral, that glorious " hymn to God, sung in obe- 
dient stone." It is true, there is no trace of this in 
the north, where, tossing on the ocean- whirls, or 
ravaging the coast of his neighbor, by the dance of 
auroral flames, the Northman thought little of his 
habitation, for he needed none. But once settled in 
Normandy, and imbibing Christian ideas, his fervid 
genius was not satisfied with the demure Saxon style 
of houses and churches. He thought of the grand 
temple of nature, where Odin was worshipped on the 
Norwegian hills, — its myriad columns of lofty trees 
that made hisrh arches together, whose organ was 
the winds in their eternal roar ; and so the Gothic 
arch aspired, with its lofty windows, its clustered 
columns, its rows of turrets, its leaves of tracery, as 
if his native grove had turned to stone by the splendid 
magic of an enchanter. 

There is a prevailing idea that people of southern 
countries are naturally more hot-blooded and fiery, 
while those of the north are phlegmatic and cold. 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 223 

There is not the least troth in this notion. Native 
southern blood is more likely to flow in lazy and 
languid currents ; for example, the ancient Peruvians 
and the Hindoos. The Norman was more of a 
northerner than the Saxon ; and, up among his native 
ice and snow, he was the most fiery-brained of all 
men that ever lived ; and the Southerner at this day 
owes his fire-eating capacities, not to his climate, but 
in spite of it, and because the blood still boils through 
him from his ancestry that came down from the 
northern pole. 

The Normans had occupied Normandy about one 
hundred and seventy years when they invaded Eng- 
land. They now pass into English history, with 
which you are all familiar, — or, if not, you ought to 
be. In 1066, William, the fifth in descent from Rollo 
the Walker, invaded England, conquered the Saxons 
in the famous battle of Hastings, came to London 
and took possession of the government, and distributed 
all its important places among the officers of his 
army. Thus the Saxon, in his turn, was among the 
vanquished, and saw an aristocracy formed above 
him. Thus the Norman, with his imperial will and 
his love of grandeur, became the upper layer of the 
social fabric of England. The building became three 
stories high, — the Briton at the bottom, the Saxon 
in the middle, and the Norman at the top ? — alas for 
the poor fellows who were undermost ! 



224 THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 

Our Southern States were first colonized from the 
top layer. Virginia was settled from a colony formed 
in London, made up of noblemen and titled gentry, 
whose prime object was to mend their worldly for- 
tunes. There were two classes of emigrants, — crim- 
inals taken from Newgate, and called jail-birds, who 
were doomed to do all the manual labor ; and the 
seventh sons of English gentry, who never labored 
at all. The jail-birds became the serfs of the soil ; 
and the gentlemen became the aristocracy of Virginia 
and Maryland. In process of time, negroes took the 
place of the jail-birds; and thus the feudalism of the 
frozen plains of Norway, transported first to sunny 
France, and thence to England, crossed over the seas, 
and became rooted in Amierican soil. New England 
was settled mainly from the middle class of English 
society, was an offshoot from English Saxondom, to 
get relief from the Norman layer that pressed griev- 
ously and heavily upon it. The sectarian divisions 
in England took place almost exactly according to a 
horizontal line, — the Norman above, and the Saxon 
below. The Norman above, with his splendid cathe- 
drals, his bishops in lawn, and his gorgeous ritual ; 
in short, the Church of England, reciting its grand 
old liturgy, and its organ music resounding through 
the arches and the long-drawn aisles, like Norwegian 
winds through long arcades of pine-trees. The Saxon 
below, praying in naked conventicles, protesting 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN 225 

against mitres and lawn as the rags of Popery, crop- 
ping out in the psalm-singing regiments of Cromwell, 
— those terrible image-breakers who praised God 
through their noses, while they rabbled cathedrals, 
and took the pictures of saints as wadding for their 
muskets. So it was, that Normandy and Saxondom 
came in conflict on English soil, and were thence 
transported beyond the main, to prolong in the latter 
days, and on American soil, this conflict of ages. 

And with these lights of history playing about us, 
you will not need any explanation of the fact, that the 
English aristocracy fraternized with the barons of 
our Southern rebellion ; for, depend upon it, the 
hatred of slavery by the English Tory is the shal- 
lowest of all delusions, and against the whole grain 
of his nature and history. It was not that he misun- 
derstood the Northern cause. He understood it all 
too well. He knew that it was the same cause that 
unseated him from his place, and, in the regiments of 
Cromwell, broke like a volcano through the upper 
English layer. And you will need as little explana- 
tion of the fact that the middle layer of English life 
beats with us like the mighty throbs of one human 
heart, that its middle working-classes could not be 
starved into sympathy with our slaveholcling rebellion, 
but echoed back the sentiments of Mr. Bright, with 
an enthusiasm that shook Exeter Hall like a new 
cradle of liberty. They are the same people that we 



226 THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN 

are, — kith and kin with us ; their hearts beat with 
us in 'jG, and through our whole war of Indepen- 
dence, and are always moved by the same electric 
thrills and touches. 

The modern Yankee being of pure Saxon stock, 
the spirit of ancestry blows through him now as 
freshly as it did in the Cimbric forests. We educate 
him, we Christianize him, we cultivate him; but when 
he relapses into his inborn tastes and manners, they 
are as sure to be Saxon as the wave lifted up by the 
gale is sure to find its level when the wind has ceased 
to blow. The New England man of education and 
culture uses two languages, — one he writes and 
speaks in, when he wishes to put on the best appear- 
ance ; and one he thinks and talks in, when he relapses 
into himself. We generally learn to think and talk 
in pure Saxon ; for that is the language of the nur- 
sery. When we put on airs, we talk French and 
Roman; as the lady who told her folks at home that 
she had been reading a good book, but next day, in 
a fashionable and literary circle, she said she had 
perused a most delectable volume. The language we 
think in is the cropping out of our inmost style of 
mind and emotion ; and the ancestral life of cen- 
turies sweeps into it, and inspires and prompts all its 
inflections and tones. 

As Yankees, we only guess : when we try to show 
our culture, we conjecture. We love and hate right 



THE SAX O.V AND THE NORMAN. 227 

heartily in Saxon. When we get Romanized, we 
show our affection and aversion. Mr. Emerson, by 
using a Saxon word instead of a Roman, branded 
forever an odious measure of the Democratic party. 
Instead of saying politely, " It will bring the country 
into bad odor," he said, it will make the very name 
of American " stink to the world ; " and people held 
their noses from it, as if they snuffed a tainted breeze. 

You are all familiar with a certain New England 
classic called " Mother Goose." But in the interior 
of New England you will seldom find any such book ; 
but you will find the songs handed down by tradition, 
the unwritten lore of every household, just as Homer 
was preserved by the rhapsodists of Greece. And if 
you have ever wondered at the strange fascination 
which the stories have over the children, you will 
cease to marvel when you find that the words are 
nearly all Saxon, and by their very sound touch the 
chord of ancestral life that vibrates downward forever. 
Touching that chord, the sound alone wakes whole 
trains of thought and feeling and imagery and fan- 
tastic association ; and so all sorts of odd people 
throng the air and the playground. 

If I were to go into the nursery, and undertake to 
draw little folks around me with a story, I might tell 
them that two persons, Marcus and Portia, ascended 
an acclivity, to transport a vessel of water, but Mar- 
cus lost his equilibrium and fell, and fractured his 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN 



cranium, and his sister experienced a similar catas- 
trophe, and I do not think I should awaken any 
special interest in Marcus and Portia, even if the 
little people understood me perfectly well. But if I 
tell them, — 

" Jack and Gill went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water : 
Jack fell down and cracked his crown, and Gill came tumbling 
after," — 

I immediately clothe my hero and heroine with 
strange interest. Jack and Gill become famous 
people at once, for no other reason than that, in 
the latter case, I use the very language the children 
think, feel, laugh, and cry in. 

There is yet another method of ascertaining, with 
a good deal of certainty, what are the hereditary 
tendencies of a people ; and that is, by taking note 
of its vulgar words. There is a tendency in all of us 
to relapse into barbarism, for the simple reason that 
we belong to a stock which was lifted originally out 
of barbarism ; and we are only held from it all the 
while by culture and Christianity, just as the waters 
of Holland are forced up out of their beds of slough 
by a system of pumps and dikes, and kept on a 
higher level, and kept clean. Let the dikes break 
away, and the waters go back with fearful surgings 
into the mire. Civilization and Christianity have 
lifted us up and diked us on a higher level ; but in 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 229 

the vulgarisms of the language, we look down into a 
fearful Saxon slough, into which we should be sure 
to plunge if the dikes should give way. The vulgar- 
isms of the language, as spoken in New England, are 
almost all Saxon idioms ; and those who use them 
habitually are the native barbarians, — just such men 
as lived in Jutland. We will not go down far into that 
bathos. But go now among the rustic population, 
and you do not find men of talent, you find men of 
gumption ; you do not find a man uncultivated, you 
find him a lout and a loon; boys do not get cor- 
rected at school, they always get licked ; and those 
who made music of an evening at the town-hall did 
not give a concert, but tooted on their flutes, and 
scraped their cat-gut ; and even the violin, up in the 
village choir, I have heard called " the Lord's fiddle." 
When men become very angry, and curse and swear, 
they always do it in pure Saxon, because then 
they are right earnest, and use their native tongue. 
When a man's indignation is factitious, and a mere 
show-off of oratory, he becomes Roman, and he calls 
the thing he hates execrable and diabolical ; but 
when he gets right mad, and relapses into his 
native Saxon barbarism, he calls it damnable and 
devilish. 

But, ladies and gentlemen, this is not all. The 
Saxon language, in its rudest state, was not made up 
chiefly of what we call vulgar words ; for the good 



230 THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 

reason that Saxon life, when the most savage, had 
some qualities out of which the sweetest virtues and 
the most heavenly graces have blossomed forth. I 
have said that the most distinguishing characteristic 
of the Saxon, even in his worst state of heathenism, 
was reverence for woman ; that he looked upon her 
as a superior being, and made her not only the 
priestess of his shrines, but the Divinity of his 
groves. Her virtue was more sacred than the in- 
most rites of the Hall of Odin ; her purity more 
awful than the snows on the Scandinavian hills. 
Before Christianity came to them (long before 
chivalry had its rise among the Normans), this 
reverence for woman was the prominent feature of 
Saxon barbarism, and made it the sure ground for 
civilization to build upon after Southern Europe lay 
reeking in its own corruption. This sentiment is 
the one in which all the home virtues take root and 
flourish. Hence in no race is the home instinct so 
strong and healthful, or family relations so pure ; and 
hence the Saxon's everlasting propensity to get a 
piece of land, build a house on it, and put a wife into 
the house, and cover all the fields about it with home 
memories, instead of owning his harem, or his plan- 
tation of slaves, or leading a nomadic life, and never 
fixing his abode. And hence you see why those 
words which strike deepest into our hearts, and touch 
the place of tears, are all Saxon words ; why we 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 231 

laugh and cry in Saxon, but do all our shamming in 
Greek, Latin, and French. The names which grow 
out of pure and reverent love between man and 
woman, and the relations it creates, are all Saxon 
names, — husband, wife, home, Jicmestead, father, 
mother, son, daughter, child, brother, sister, lover, 
betrothed. These are Saxon words sacredly appro- 
priated, because the words which answer to these 
in Greek, Latin, and Oriental languages have been 
soiled and degraded in the corruptions of an effete 
civilization. For instance, to say in good Saxon, that 
a person has a loving disposition, is to pay him a 
compliment; but to say in Roman he has an amorous 
disposition, is a compliment you would gladly avoid. 
Conjugal, a Roman word, means yoked together; 
going down for its image to the cattle of the field. 
The Saxon word wife, means one that weaves (weave, 
woof, wife), giving you the image of woman at the 
loom, filling the ear with the grateful hum of home 
industry, and the mind with the charm of home com- 
forts and associations. (And, by the way, I never 
could admire the taste of a certain class of clergy- 
men, who always call their wives their companions, 
as if they never were lawfully married, but only took 
their meals together.) Hence you see why such a 
singular witchery hangs about the names which de- 
scribe the homestead and the farm. Nature, before 
it has been humanized, we describe by Roman words. 



THE SAXON AND THE NOR: 



The mountains, the torrents, the deserts, the rivers, 
the plains, the islands, the continents, and the oceans, 
— these are Roman, because they describe Nature 
in her wildness, and before man has covered them 
with heart memories and home associations. But 
the farms, the hills, the streams, the orchards, the 
groves, the brooks, the grounds, the meadows, the 
gardens, and the bowers, — these are all Saxon, for 
they are fragrant with domestic sympathies and 
loves. There is a house near by them, and in 
sight, with lights gleaming through its windows, 
''where the busy housewife plies her evening care." 
The great fowls of the air, that are birds of prey, 
and never domesticate, — the eagles, the herons, and 
the vultures, — have Roman names; but the doves, 
the sparrows, the swallows, the bobolinks, the larks, 
the wretis, the chickadees, that pick the crumbs from 
your door, and twitter under your eaves, and wake you 
by their minstrelsy of a summer morning, — these 
are pure Saxon, for they catch the home instinct, and 
reflect its loves. And the robin, though his first 
name is Roman, yet owes his addition of redbreast 
to the same gentle and loving characteristic. He 
takes his surname from the Saxon, because he builds 
his nest and sings in the old apple-tree beside your 
door. So it is that the pure old Saxon sentiment of 
reverence for woman, as zvoman, became the stem out 
of which the domestic virtues blossomed forth, and 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 233 

threw their sweetest fragrancy and beauty about the 
homestead, after the Roman empire had gone down 
in the mire, and the relations between its men and 
women were polluted with lust. And the Saxon 
sentiment has thrown enchantment over all things 
within its sphere, and made them haunt our memories 
with strange and witching music. As a living poet 
says, very beautifully, — 

" Old Saxon words, old Saxon words, your spells are round us 

thrown : 
Ye haunt our daily paths and dreams with a music all your own. 
Each one, in its own power a host, to fond remembrance brings 
The earliest, brightest aspect back of life's familiar things. 

Yours are the hills, the fields,- the woods, the orchards, and the 

streams, 
The meadows and the bowers, that bask in the sun's rejoicing 

beams : 
'Mid them our childhood's years were kept, our childhood's 

thoughts were reared, 
And by your household tones its joys were evermore endeared. 

We have roamed since then where the myrtle bloomed in its 

own unclouded realms, 
But our hearts return with changeless love to the brave old 

Saxon elms ; 
Where the laurel o'er its native streams of a deathless glory 

spoke, 
But we passed with pride to the later fame of the sturdy Saxon 

OAK." 



234 THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 

For similar reasons, the Saxon courage became 
something very different from the brute ferocity of 
other savages. The Highland Celt fought from fealty 
to his chieftain and his clan, and from his innate love 
of brutality and blood. The Saxon fought for land, 
— land to put his house on; and, having put a wife 
into it, he fought for his home ; and that breathed 
into his courage a sublimer sentiment, and lifted it 
above the ferocity of the animal. 

Hence the arts of peace flourish pre-eminently 
under Saxon rule. Nobody but a Yankee under- 
stands the full correlative meaning of those two 
words, liberty and law. Saxon civilization is peace- 
ful. Norman is warlike. Our military terms are for 
the most part Roman words ; for these are used to 
functions of government and conquest, and breathe 
the spirit of the battle-field. On the other hand, the 
Saxon words take their flavor from the household, 
and preserve its aroma, and spring a long train of 
memories after them. As Mr. Macaulay says of 
reading Milton, the words suggest a great deal more 
than they mean, and carry you back to your child- 
hood, to the schoolroom, by some magic you cannot 
analyze. None knew better than Milton the secret 
of this word-magic. In his controversial prose works 
he builds up Latin sentences whole pages high, and 
rolls them down upon his enemies like Jupiter launch- 
ing from Olympus his thunder volleys, which keep 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 235 

on growling and growling till they get half way 
round the sky. But open " Paradise Lost," and if 
you come to a passage that haunts you with its 
witching music, and calls back the hours when you 
walked with your betrothed by moonlight, or when 
you went in rosy childhood to drive the cattle, 
brushing the dews from the grass, and hearing the 
birds sing to the sunrise, I venture to say that 
two-thirds of the words are Saxon, and for that 
reason have become flavored with the home affections. 
Here is a sentence of eighty-nine words ; and just 
seventy-two of them are Saxon : ■— 

" With thee conversing I forget all time ; 
All seasons, and their change, all please alike. 
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, 
With charm of earliest birds ; pleasant the sun, 
When first on this delightful land he spreads 
His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, 
Glistening with dew ; fragrant the fertile earth 
After soft showers ; and sweet the coming on 
Of grateful evening. mild ; then silent night, 
With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon, 
And these the gems of heaven, her starry train." 

Saxon superstitions, such as existed more than one 
thousand years ago in Jutland, have even come clown 
to us, and are alive to-clay in New England ; for ex- 
ample, those about the moon, and about lucky and 
unlucky days. Mr. Turner says any peasant now 



236 THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 

would be ashamed of them. He is mistaken. Off 
in Berkshire County, which is of pure native stock, 
a farmer one day was crossing his neighbor's fields, 
and saw him with a bag of grain, sitting down, and 
waiting patiently for the lucky hour of sowing. 

" What are you waiting for ? " said his neighbor. 

" For ten minutes past two," said he. 

" And what is to happen then ? " 

" Why, the moon changes." He would not sow 
ten minutes before, for fear of losing his crop. The 
same man probably would not undertake a journey 
on Friday, or Freda's Day, nor crawl under a bar 
without spitting back, to take off the evil charm. If 
a child is born on such a day, it will live; on such 
other day, it will die. Whatever you dream, on the 
first night of the old moon, will be joyful to you ; 
and your luck for the month depends upon your see- 
ing the new moon on your right hand. If you dream 
of seeing an eagle fly over your head, you will be pro- 
moted, — how high depends on the height of the 
eagle. Charms for the cure of disease were numer- 
ous ; and a man told me once that he relieved his 
rheumatism by one of these charms, and, if I should 
describe it, I am afraid you would not believe me. 
And the same methods of divination for discerning the 
future, practised in Jutland more than one thousand 
years ago, are good in some parts of New England 
even till this day. 



THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 237 

But we have not time to explore this mine, though 
a very fertile one. 

What is to be the issue in America, of this long 
conflict between the Saxon and the Norman, is a 
question already decided. It was decided even before 
our civil war, which crippled the Norman, and shat- 
tered his institutions in pieces. Glance for an instant 
over the map, and measure with your eye the vast 
unsettled territory of the United States. It extends 
through eighteen degrees of latitude, and occupies 
both slopes of the Rocky Mountains, — one slope 
stretching east, to the Mississippi ; the other west, to 
the Pacific Sea. Its space is equal to all the twenty- 
five States east of the Mississippi. It has all the 
climates of all the zones, and extends through the 
realms of perpetual frost and perpetual flowers ; its 
rivers more majestic than those of the East; its 
soil the richest in all the world, — richer in gold 
than the sands of Pactolus ; its trees, whether for 
beauty or for use, of more value, a thousand times, 
than those that " weep amber on the banks of Po." 
The whole eastern part of this region is underlaid 
with coal-mines ; and there one clay will be, not only 
the granaries, but the workshops and manufactories 
of the world. In the coming century, the seat of 
commerce is to be transferred to the western shore. 
Into that region the United States are moving at the 
rate of seventeen miles a year. And it is a most 



238 THE SAXON AND THE NORMAN. 

interesting- fact, that the Northern tide outstrips the 
Southern, as two to one ; carrying with it New Eng- 
land institutions and ideas. There is no law of 
nature which forbids serfdom there, for it existed on 
the Norwegian hills : but there is a law of God that 
will exclude it ; and that is the omnipotence of the 
family institution, over feudalism with its elements 
of weakness and decay ; and thus the Saxon home 
is sure to cover these western slopes with its sweet 
associations and memories, and make the whole range 
of the Rocky Mountains echo with the music of the 
Saxon tongue. 



POEMS. 



EMANCIPATION. 

HARK ! through the North a Spirit waking slow, 
And rousing like a strong man after sleep : 
Its murmurs come like whirlwinds speaking low, 
Ere yet they lift the billows of the deep. 
What though this power is long and slow to wake ! 
Oh ! ye are mad, its strength to brave and dare ; 
For, if its thunders from their mountains wake, 
They'll smite your fields, and clear the northern air. 
Then from the North, along its whole frontier, 
A light shall stream in columns to the skies, 
And like a new Aurora shall appear 
To the whole land that South in darkness lies ; 
And while its flames do shake their banners near, 
Your slaves will hail them with rejoicing eyes. 
.844- 



241 



k 'OLD JOHN BROWN." 

THEY call thee hot-brained, crazed, and mad 
But every word that falls 
Goes straight and true, and hits the mark 

More sure than cannon-balls. 
Through spectre forms of bogus law 

It cuts its way complete ; 
And judge and jury, too, are tried 
At God's great judgment-seat. 



Old man, farewell ! They'll take thy life 

For dangerous enough, 
In these our sweetly piping times, 

Are men of hero stuff. 
We should tread soft above the fires 

That underneath us lie : 
You'll crack the crust of compromise, 

And set them spouting high. 

Where Henry's cry for " Liberty " 

Once sent its shivering thrill, 
There's only room, six feet by two, 

For heroes now to fill. 
And o'er the spot the years will roll, 

As spring its verdure weaves, 
And autumn o'er the felon's grave 

Shakes down its yellow leaves. 
242 



" OLD JOHN BROWN." 243 

But not the spot six feet by two 

Will hold a man like thee : 
John Brown will tramp the shaking earth 

From Blue Ridge to the sea, 
Till the strong angel comes at last, 

And ope's each dungeon door, 
And God's Great Charter holds, and waves 

O'er all his humble poor. 

And then the humble poor will come, 

In that far distant day, 
And from the felon's nameless 'grave 

They'll brush the leaves away; 
And gray old men will point the spot, 

Beneath the pine-tree shade, 
. As children ask with streaming eyes, 

Where Old John Brown was laid. 

November, 1859. 



SONG OF THE STARS AND 
STRIPES. 

WE see the gallant streamer yet 
Float from the bastioned walls : 
One hearty song for fatherland 

Before its banner fails ! 
Last on <5ur gaze when, outward bound, 

We plough the ocean's foam ; 
First on our longing eyes again, 
To waft our welcome home. 

Beneath thy shade we've toiled in peace, 

The golden corn we reap ; 
We've taken home our bonny brides, 

We've rocked our babes to sleep ; 
We marched to front the battle storms 

That brought the invader nigh, 
When the grim lion cowered and sank 

Beneath the eagle's eye. 

Beneath the stars and stripes we'll keep, 

Come years of weal or woe : 
Close up again the broken line, 

And let the traitors go ! 
Ho, brothers of the " Border States " ! 

We reach across the line, 
And pledge our faith and honor now, 

As once in Auld Lang Syne. 
244 



SONG OF THE STARS AND STRIPES. 245 

We'll keep the memories bright and green 

Of all our old renown ; 
We'll strike the traitor hand that's raised 

To pluck the eagle down. 
Still shall it guard your Southern homes 

From all the foes that come : 
We'll move with you to harp and flute, 

Or march to fife and drum. 

Or, if ye turn from us in scorn, 

Still shall our nation's sign 
Roll out again its streaming stars 

On all the border line. 
And with the same old rallying cry, 

Beneath its folds we'll meet ; 
And they shall be our conquering sign, 

Or be our winding-sheet ! 

'Tis said that when Jerusalem 

Sank in her last despair, 
A spectre sword hung gory red 

just o'er her in the air. 
Ye that tear down your country's flag, 

Look, where God's gathering ire 
Hangs in its place, just o'er your heads, 

A sword of bloody fire ! 

March, 1861. 



SONG FOR JULY 4, 1861. 

STILL wave our streamer's glorious folds 
O'er all the brave and true, 
Though ten dim stars have turned to blood 
On yonder field of blue. 

It is our nation's judgment-day, 

That makes her stars to fall. 
Lo ! all the dead start from their graves 

At Freedom's trumpet-call. 

And in the thunders of the storm 

She speaks, an angel strong: 
" Now comes my reign of righteousness ; 

Now ends the slavers' wrong. 

Lift up your heads, ye faithful ones, 

For now your prayers prevail. 
Ye faithless ! hear the tramp of doom, 

And dread the iron hail ! 

God's last Messiah comes apace 

In Freedom's awful name, 
And parts the tribes to right and left, — 

To glory or to shame." 

Then wave the streamer's glorious folds 

O'er all the brave and true, 
Till all its stars shine bright again 

On yonder field of bine. 

246 



THE HOME GUARD. 



O 



N the nations bound in error, 
Lies the ancient night of terror, 



Lies the old Egyptian gloom. 
Still the blinded nations leading, 
Are the hosts of martyrs bleeding, — 

Bleeding till the morning come. 

Where the stars and stripes are streaming, 
Fail the martyrs, grandly dreaming 

Of the coming Age of Gold ; 
And we write their names in glory, 
Fighting in the battle gory, 

Lying in their coffins cold. 

But those other martyrs' praises, 
Which no trump of fame upraises, 

But whose works their glory show, — 
Parents, teachers, wives, and daughters, 
Leading by the gentle waters 

Where the trees of knowledge grow, — 

Faithful Home Guard of the nation, 
In its glorious celebration 

Shall your works forever shine ; 
For they break the night of terror, 
And drive back the ancient error, 

Leading in the Day Divine. 

July 4, 1861. 

247 



HOW GOLD MAY BE KEPT 
BRIGHT. 



O 



{From Horace.] 

CRISP US, foe to sordid gain ! 
The man whose heart is tender 



Makes all the gold his hands obtain 
Shine with redoubled splendor. 



And all our love engages : 
Fame bears him on her wings along 
The never-dying ages. 

For when, upon his brothers, Fate 
With cruel hand was pressing, 

He shared with them his own" estate, 
With all a father's blessing. 

Add field to field, — rule all the climes 
Whose shores the sea is laving : 

'T is nobler far to rule betimes 
The soul that 's in thee craving. 

248 



GOLDEN MEAN. 

[Translation. Horace, Carmen X., Lib. II.] 

HILE the fierce winds above us sweep, 
Let us, my friend, our vessel keep 
Not on the wide and surging deep, 
Nor near the. treacherous shoals. 
To whom the golden medium falls, 
He dwelleth not in ruined walls, 
Nor proudly walks in splendid halls, 
The mark of envious souls. 

Huge pines by fiercest blasts are blown, 
The loftiest towers come heaviest down, 
On skyward cliffs so bleak and brown 

The thunderbolt will ring. 
So let us fear 'mid fortune's blaze, 
And let us hope in evil days : 
Winter recedes, and o'er his ways 

Dance the gay hours of spring. 

The ills of life shall then retire : 
Apollo sometimes strikes his lyre 
To joyous notes ; nor in his ire 

Doth always bend his bow. 
Therefore, amid thy troubles here, 
Bear bravely up with lofty cheer ; 
And slack thy sails, and wisely fear, 

When prosperous breezes blow. 
May, 1851. 

249 



SERENITY. 

[A paraphrase from Horace. Carmen III., Lib. II.] 

MY friend, where'er you tread this scene 
Of varied joys and cares, 
Preserve thy mind alike serene 
In sad or gay affairs. 

Whether you live in sorrow's shade, 

Or on the grass recline 
In bowers by pines and poplars made 

To quaff the generous wine, — 

There, while the boughs above thy head 

A living roof weave high, 
And purling brooks with quivering tread 

Run bounding gladly by, — 

Let them bring wine, and sweet perfume, 

And roses fresh and gay ; 
For soon, like these, we cease to bloom, 

And fade from earth away. 

The house, the grove, the costly field 

"Which yellow Tiber laves, 
This heaped-up wealth to heirs we yield, 

And seek forgotten graves. 

250 



SERENITY. 251 



The highest and the humblest thing, 
The wealthiest, poorest, — all 

Are victims to the tyrant king, 
And all alike mast fall. 

Even now the fatal lot we know 

Is shaken in the urn : 
Soon it comes forth, and then we go 

Whence we shall not return. 

May, 1851. 



OLD ENGLAND AND NEW. 

[Written and sung on board the Cunard steamship " Siberia," which sailed 
from Liverpool Aug. 20, 1S73.] 

OLD England's shore of summer green 
Fades on the dark-blue waters. 
God's blessing on thy noble Queen, 

And all thy sons and daughters ! 
The land where holy martyrs bled, 

Of thrilling song and story, — 
Thy sun shines bright, and may it shed 
A blaze of endless glory ! 

Land of the western shore ! we keep 

Our filial hearts still near thee : 
Our love for thee grows strong and deep, 

With all our wanderings weary. 
Above our homes thy peaceful bow 

Its sweetest hues is blending ; 
Thy lightnings round the world that go, 

Not bane, but bliss, are sending. 



Our gallant ship that walks the seas 
From one shore to the other, 

Oh, bear the olive-boughs of peace 
From brother back to brother ! 
252 



OLD ENGLAND AND NEW. 253 

God bless thy captain and his men, 

The waves thy pathway making, 
And all who keep the golden chain 

Of brotherhood from breaking: ! 



ODE. 

[For the fiftieth anniversary of Dr. Eliphalet Nott's Presidency at Union 
College, Schenectady.] 

WE'VE wandered east, we've wandered west," 
Since through these halls we strayed 
And fondly dreamed our waking dreams 

In Union's soothing shade. 
Now we return with sandals worn, 

To Learning's ancient shrine 
Where busy memories start and throng 

From days of auld lang syne, — 
The thronging memories fond and dear 
Of auld lang syne. 

We've wandered east, we've wandered west, 

On prairie, sea, and shore ; 
And some have laid their weary forms 

Where life's last dream is o'er. 
They walked with us through Learning's bowers, 

And plucked its " gowans fine : " 
They girded on their armor bright, 

With us in days lang syne. 
We'll breathe for them one pensive strain 
Of auld lang syne. 

We've wandered east, we've wandered west, 

O'er many a shifting scene : 
This spot, in all the lengthening past, 

Has only grown more green ; 
254 



ODE. 255 



For here our father, friend and sage, 

With locks of silvery shine, 
Kept watch above our youthful ways, 

In days of auld lang syne. 
We've kept his memory bright and dear 
Of auld lang syne. 

Borne onward by the solemn sea, 

From time's receding shore, 
Union, thy light, from which we steered, 

Shall greet our eyes no more. 
Still thou, the Pharos of the waves, 

Shalt o'er the waters shine, 
And bear upon thy beaming front 

One name from years lang syne, — 
One ever dear remembered name. 
Of auld lang syne. 



HYMN. 

[Written for, and sung at the ordination of Mr. Sears, in Way land, Feb. 20, 
i839-] 

UR fathers, where are they, 
Who here in ancient time 
Came with the faltering steps of age, 

Or manhood's glorious prime? 
Oh ! some in yonder peaceful tombs 

Their long, last sabbath keep, 
Where from the idle, hurrying throng 
Th,e mourner turns to weep. 

Along these solemn aisles 

Where floats the song of praise, 
Do not their lingering spirits hear 

Their old and cherished lays ? 
And when the fervent voice of prayer 

To God for favor calls, 
Oh ! blend they not their spirit tones 

That " talk along the walls " ? 

Their children, where are they, 

Who now their footsteps tread ? 
Walk they in bonds of love and peace, 

To join the pious dead ? 
Come blooming youth, come reverend age, 

While yet your years revolve, 
And take, within this holy fane, 

The high and pure resolve. 
256 



HYMN. 257 



God of our fathers, hear 

The solemn vows we pay, 
And let celestial breathings move 

Upon our souls to-day ! 
Oh, may the tie we consecrate, 

Thy pledge of favor prove ! 
Shed here thy warm, benignant beams 

Of everlasting; love. 



HYMN. 

[For the fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of Rev. Joseph Field, D.D. 
over the First Parish in Weston.] 

k ATHER of mercies ! in the radiant morning 
Thy youthful servant started on his way ; 
And prayers were breathed for light and grace adorning, 
And that his strength be equal to his day. 

And Thou hast answered. Fifty years of blessing 

Have fallen o'er us gently as the rain : 
Thy promised grace, thy heavenly peace, possessing, 

Here in thy house, and in our homes again. 

Father, we thank Thee. Through the fruitful meadows. 

Still guide the flock and pastor by thy hand, 
And grant him, walking through the evening shadows, 

Still brighter openings towards the Promised Land, 

Till, passing on through earth's brief jo} T s and trials, 
Pastor and people join the immortal throng, 

Who sweeter incense waft from golden vials, 
And worship Thee in their unending song. 

February, 1865. 
2s8 



GOLDEN-WEDDING HYMN. 

l WO summer streams were flowing 



T 



Bright in the morninsf sun ; 



And in their course, with gentle force, 
They mingled into one. 1 

Now flows the blended river 

Beneath the western sky ; 
And manifold the hues of gold 

Calm on its bosom lie. 



Your stream of life has flowed ; 
And now may rest upon its breast 
The golden peace of God ! 

Warm hearts are beating round you ; 

And in our fervent song, 
Here do we pray, your closing day 

May linger late and long ; 

That warmest benedictions 

May soothe its latest stage, 
And wreathe with flowers of summer hours 

The snowy crown of age ; 

1 The opening stanza is not a literal quotation, but is in close imitation of 
Brainard's very beautiful Epithalamium, commencing, — 

" I saw two clouds at morning." 

259 



260 GOLDEN-WEDDING HYMN. 



Till, clothed in wedding garments, 
You stand before the throne 

Whence cometh down the bridal crown, 
And the sweet voice, " Well doxe ! 



1865. 



A GREETING FROM THE SUNDAY 
SCHOOL. 



H 



[Written for the Christmas Festival of the Sunday School at Westcn, Dec. 
■5, }S75.] 

'O, teachers, friends, and parents dear, 
Who join our festive throng, 
We send you greeting as we sing 

Our merry Christmas song! 
The song which here we sing to-night 

Shall be the glad refrain 
Of that which swept the heavenly lyres 
O'er Bethlehem's starlit plain. 

O ye whose selfish hearts are chilled 

Beneath the world's cold blight, 
Make room ! make room ! for lo ! He comes 

A Saviour comes to-night. 
Hold up to Him your waning lamps, 

To fill with oil once more, 
Till, from the fount of Love Divine, 

Your souls are brimming o'er. 

And ye who bear the ills of life, 

And faint beneath its load, 
Grown weary of your painful toil 

To climb the heavenly road, 

261 



262 A GREETING FROM THE SUNDAY SCHOOL. 

Good cheer ! good cheer ! He comes — He comes, 

Your pain and grief to share ; 
For He who reigns in glory now 

Has borne the cross ye bear. 

Ho, children I sing, and clap your hands, 

And lift your notes of praise 
To Him whose heart beats warm with yours, 

In childhood's winsome ways. 
He came your joyous times to know, — 

The babe of heavenly birth ; 
For He who reigns in glory now 

Was once a child on earth. 

Hail, Santa Claus ! whose hand to-night 

Brings tokens rich and free : 
The fruits that grow in sunniest climes 

Hang on the Christmas-tree. 
Good-will and Faith and Hope and Love 

Its bending branches bear. 
Come, let us pluck the healing leaves 

And golden clusters there. 



CALM AT SEA. 

[Off Cohasset Beach, July 8, 1847.] 

YE spirits of the air and wave, 
Oh ! whither are ye fled? 
All nature sleeps ; nor only sleeps, 

But, like a corpse, lies dead. 
Across the charmed and glassy sea 

No morning zephyr strays : 
The sun, with face of blood-red hue, 
Looks angry through the haze. 

The sky above, and the sky below, 

With rival fires are seen ; 
And midway in this awful space 

Our vessel hangs between. 
But we move ! not o'er the heaving main, 

Where cool sea-breezes blow, 
But we 're sinking down, we 're sinking down, 

To lodge in that sky below. 



Look yonder ! for some spectre moves 

In terror o'er the sea : 
Beneath his wings the waves look black, 

And quiver frightfully. 
He comes ! he comes ! our vessel scuds 

Before his threatening ire ; 
And from our prow, on either side, 

Roll floods of foaming fire. 



263 



264 CALM AT SEA. 



He smites the air, and from their cells 

Rush out the shrieking gales : 
They catch the canvas as they come, 

And flap the bellying sails. 
Across the noon his ghastly form 

Its baleful shadow flings : 
He lifts the spray, and through the air 

He shakes it from his wings. 



Ah, treacherous calm ! like that which comes 

O'er souls that sleep in sin, 
What time the passions cease to stir, 

And stillness reigns within. 
I thought my sins removed ; I felt 

Their power within me die : 
I thought the peace of souls redeemed 

Came sweetly from on high. 

And then, alas ! they woke again, 

And raged without control : 
Storms that had seemed forever hushed 

Swept o'er my darkened soul ; 
O'er the dead waves of deep desire 

Some dark temptation came ; 
And so my bark was tossed again 

On waves of rolling flame. 



Methinks that on this solemn scene, 
And at this thoughtful hour, 

Where ever-changing forms do preach 
God's never-changing power : 



CALM AT SEA. 265 



While from the quickly pulsing waves, 

The loud sea-anthems roll, — 
A more prevailing prayer might rise 

From the heavenward breathing soul : — 

Send then, O God, thy cherubim 

All fragrant with thy love, 
And let their whitely-flashing wings 

Around my spirit move ; 
There let them breathe no treacherous calm, 

But breathe a holy rest 
Till thy glorious heavens see themselves 

In my clear and tranquil breast. 



DIRGE. 

FAREWELL, brother! deep and lowly 
Rest thee on thy bed of clay. 
Kindred saints, and angels holy, 

Bore thy heavenward soul away. 
Sad, we gave thee to that number 

Laid in yonder icy halls, 
Where above thy peaceful slumber 
Many a shower of sorrow falls. 

Hear our prayer, O God of glory, 

Lowly breathed in sorrow's song ! 
Bleeding hearts lie bare before Thee, 

Come, in holy trust made strong. 
Hark ! a voice moves nearer, stronger, 

From the shadowy land ye dread, — 
" Mortals ! mortals ! seek no longer 

Those that live, anions the dead." 



Farewell, brother ! soon we meet thee 

Where no cloud of sorrow rolls ; 
For glad tidings float, how sweetly ! 

From the glorious land of souls. 
Death's cold gloom — it parts asunder : 

Lo ! the folding shades are gone. 
Mourner, upward ! yonder, yonder, 

" God's broad day comes pouring on ! 



>66 



GUARDIAN ANGELS. 

[Written by the bedside of a very sick lady, who seemed in a sweet sleep.] 

AS in the garden's gloomy shades, 
To Jesus bending low, 
They came, and from his burdened soul 

Rolled off its weight of woe ; 
So now they come whene'er we droop 

With sickness, care, or pain, 

And pour a cool, assuaging balm 

Through every burning vein. 

At night I seek my weary couch, 

Now rough with many a thorn, 
And pray, while sleep forsakes my eyes, 

" Oh, speed the wings of morn ! " 
But ere the light from morning land 

First through my window gleams, 
The guardian spirit softly comes, 

And prompts my pleasing dreams. 

When the frail robe thy spirit wears, 

At length is worn away, 
The angel band shall lead thee on, 

And smooth thine upward way ; 
And thou wilt rise, thou weary one, 

And be an angel too, 
And bear the same sweet ministries 

Which now they bear to you. 

267 



IN SICKNESS. 

THERE is an hour of silent prayer : 
I've felt its joys serene, 
When, Lord, thy face beamed like a sun, 

With not a cloud between : 
'Twas when my passions lulled to rest, 

And all my pride was still, 
Thy peace descended as the dew 
Falls soft on Hermon's hill. 

If here amidst the storms of life, 

Shut in this house of clay, 
Such gleams of glory struggle through 

From thine eternal day, 
Oh, what the peace that o'er the heart 

Its golden dews distils, 
Beneath that morn that ever reigns 

O'er all the heavenly hills ! 

But here the clouds will cast their gloom 

Across my sunlit skies ; 
Dark thoughts, like flocks of evil birds, 

Out of my heart will rise. 
And yet I know thine angels come, 

An ever-shining throng, 
To guard from evil, and to make 

My spirit bright and strong. 

268 



IN SICKNESS. 269 



Lord, send thy pare, baptizing fire 

To cleanse my heart anew ; 
And o'er my spirit let thy grace 

Descend like heavenly dew. 
Come as thy Spirit came of old, 

Soft on the rushing breeze, 
And fit me for those " heavenly troops 

And sweet societies." 



July 19, 1847. 



AWAY FROM CHURCH. 

FATHER Divine ! thy glorious face, 
That beamed so bright erewhile, 
Now seems behind the gathering clouds 

To hide its gracious smile. 
How heavy o'er my couch of care 

These sabbath hours have flown ! 
Far from the meekly gathering flock, 
Their pastor droops alone. 

'Tis not the sufferings Thou dost send, 

'Tis not the pain I bear, 
That hangs upon my drooping heart 

This heavy load of care ; 
'Tis not the opening gate of death, 

The Christian's sweet release, 
Through which thy beckoning angel calls 

Up to the land of peace. 

But while those sweetly sounding chimes 

Here through my windows roll, 
Thy word, that must not pass my lips, 

Lies burning in my soul. 
And oh ! another thought than that 

Comes o'er my spirit now, 
Deepening the shade that sickness flings 

Across my throbbing brow. 

270 



AWAY FROM CHURCH. 2 7 1 

For ere the cheek had lost its glow, 

Or the arm had lost its power, 
Oh ! did I serve Thee as I ought, 

And seize the golden hour? 
Mine was the sorrowing to console, 

The sinful to reprove ; 
Did I give my people all my strength 

And undivided love ? 

Nov/, too, the Past throws wide its doors, 

As Memory turns the key, 
And shows how poor are all the works 

My hands have done for Thee. 
Then up, and up, through golden air, 

While the earth wanes below, 
I see thy saints, that cast their crowns, 

In white robes bending low. 

How glad they move on winged feet, 

Thy mandates to fulfil ! 
No self in them to be denied, — 

Theirs but the Eternal Will. 
Oh ! in these long and silent hours, 

Send thy baptizing love, 
That I on earth may do thy will, 

As they in heaven above. 

Oh ! now I see a Father's love, 

And not a Father's frown : 
Thou mak'st the burning tongue be still, 

And the hands hang feebly clown. 



272 AWAY FR OM CHUR CH. 

For in thy name the tongue must speak, 

And in that name alone ; 
That feeble hand thy glory serve, 

But never serve its own. 

My God ! thy high and pure designs 

I seek not to explore : 
Thine is my strength if here restored, 

Thine when my life is o'er. 
Thine through these lingering days I'll live, 

And thine in meekness die : 
And in my Father's folding arms, 

Now like a child I lie. 

1 862. 



SHOW US THE FATHER." 

SHOW us the Father ! Lift thine eye 
And bend thy gaze above, 
Where, mild and clear, the evening star 

Sends down its look of love ; 
When sinking Day resigns once more 

The fields he brightly won, 
And Night, with slow and solemn pomp, 
O'er her wide realm moves on. 

Show us the Father ! Now the sun 

Sinks in his "golden grave," 
And weary whirlwinds droop their wings 

Upon. the peaceful wave. 
The land and sea unite to raise 

Their grateful evening hymn ; 
While Nature's altar-fires burn bright, 

Devotion's fire burns dim. 

Show us the Father ! Beauty flings 

Her banner on the air, 
And Earth, from all her sombre heights, 

Sends up her evening prayer. 
Summer's low anthems sweetly breathe 

From harps of heavenly frame : 
Comes there no sound upon thine ear, 

To speak the Father's name ? 

273 



274 "SHOW US THE FATHER." 

Oh ! if the earth-bound spirit feels 

No presence from above. 
Turn to that everlasting page, 

Bright with a Father's love. 
Close the wide world of glory out, 

Of sea and earth and air ; 
And, having shut thy closet door, 

Oh ! meet the Father there. 



TWO SPIRIT WORLDS. 



'"INHERE is a land of pure delight, 



Where saints immortal reign; 



1 

Their saintly minds in heaven's pure light 
Cleave not to earth again. 

No winter storms in their abode, 

No blight, and no decay : 
Their sunshine is the smile of God, 

That makes eternal day. 

How young they grow, as o'er them still 

The endless years roll on ! 
How strong they grow to do God's will, 

And live to Him alone ! 

Another spirit land, I trow, 

Vexed with our mean affairs, 
Lies close upon earth's confines low, 

And meddles with its cares. 

The "carnal mind" still to them clings, 

Is with them there as here ; 
And so, with endless gossipings, 

They mingle in our sphere. 

Friend of my youth ! who here in time 

Put on thy robes of white, 
Thy home is on those heights sublime, 

Amono- the sons of Lisht. 



275 



276 TWO SPIRIT WORLDS. 

Not mingling in our vulgar noise, 

Thy cheery tones we hear, 
But mingling in the " still small voice 



That charms my inward ear. 



July 30, 1875. 



MY PSALM. 

OTHOU most present in our paths 
When least thy steps we see ! 
Amid these wrecks of earthly hopes 
I breathe my prayer to Thee. 

What though this house thy hand has built 

Must in these ruins fall ! 
My soul shall rise, sustained by Thee, 

Serene above them all. 

And pain, which in the long, long hours 

Keeps on by night and day, 
Through these fast crumbling walls to Thee 

Finds a new opening way ; 

For through the rents already made, 

I see thy glorious face, 
And songs unheard by mortal ears 

Chant thy redeeming grace. 

Oh ! build anew this mortal frame, 

And make it serve Thee still, 
Or make these ministries of pain 

Their blessed end fulfil, 

That, held and chastened by thy hand, 

I yet may come to Thee, 
Subdued and ripened for the work 

Of immortality. 

277 



278 MY PSALM. 



For there upon the immortal shores, 
The throngs in white array 

Came from these ministries of pain, 
To serve Thee night and day. 

June 18, 1875. 



mSBSE!* of congress 



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